Up to $29 billion was lost to fraud and mismanagement, an investigation has found
The US lost up to $29 billion to mismanagement and misconduct during its occupation of Afghanistan, all while pursuing unrealistic goals in the country, according to a new report from a government watchdog.
Released on Wednesday, the report concludes a 17-year investigation by the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR), which identified 1,327 instances of waste, fraud, and abuse totaling $26-29.2 billion, most of it lost through inefficiencies and improper use of assets. Fraud accounted for around 2% of the total and abuse for 4%. The watchdog noted that more than $4.6 billion of taxpayer money could have been saved.
America’s “20-year mission to build a stable, democratic” Afghanistan was a failure, undermined from the start by unrealistic expectations and compounded by corruption and misuse of public funds, SIGAR said. According to the watchdog, Afghanistan should serve as a cautionary tale, warning policymakers that any future reconstruction effort of similar scale must acknowledge the risk of failure from the start.
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