The rapid collapse of Afghanistan’s armed forces may have surprised President Biden but dozens of reports from a federal watchdog revealed how the U.S. bungled efforts to shore up the country.
From millions spent on military planes left rotting at Kabul’s international airport to the billions of dollars wasted trying and failing to eradicate the country’s opium crops, the dispatches from the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction Illustrated the fraud and abuse that derailed a $145 billion effort.
‘If the goal was to rebuild and leave behind a country that could sustain itself and pose little threat to U.S. national security interests, the overall picture in Afghanistan is bleak,’ John Sopko concluded in his most report published this week.
