5/24/18
WASHINGTON — The watchdog responsible for monitoring the U.S. government’s effort to rebuild Afghanistan says the 15-year, $5 billion effort hasn’t worked, according to a report released Thursday. The Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR) says the U.S. set unrealistic expectations for stabilizing Afghanistan on a short timeline, that the Obama administration lacked the political will to invest the necessary time and effort to stabilize the country, and that some efforts to bolster the Afghan government actually backfired. “[Our] overall assessment is that despite some heroic efforts to stabilize insecure and contested areas in Afghanistan between 2002 and 2017, the program mostly failed,” said John Sopko, head of SIGAR, at a Thursday morning event announcing the report. The report examines stabilization efforts from 2002, soon after the U.S. began military operations in the country, to 2017. Some efforts to introduce increased Afghan government control also produced unintended consequences, according to the report, because they created more opportunities for corruption.
By 2008, the security situation in much of the country had deteriorated and insurgent attacks began to mount. The report focuses most of its attention on a period beginning in 2009, when the incoming Obama administration attempted to reverse the decline, and when the U.S. spent the bulk of the $4.7 billion that has been dedicated to stabilization since 2002. But the Obama administration also had a drawdown clock for removing U.S. forces from Afghanistan, and the report says the decision to draw down forces on timelines unrelated to conditions on the ground “had a profound and harmful impact” on later decisions about stabilization.Despite the harsh assessment, SIGAR writes that future efforts to stabilize other nations should not be abandoned. “Poor results of this particular stabilization mission make it tempting to conclude that stabilization should not be conducted in the future at all,” says the report. Future efforts could be successful, the report concludes, if there are realistic expectations of the level of effort required and what is achievable, better preparation and improved oversight.
