The impact of five US presidents in Afghanistan 5:31
(CNN) -
An incoherent strategy to rebuild Afghanistan, packed with resources but lacking cohesive leadership and a well-defined mission, doomed America's 20-year reconstruction effort, which saw US taxpayers pouring in $ 145 billion. in projects that are often unsustainable, corrupt and forced on unrealistic deadlines.
The findings of the latest report from the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR) offer scathing criticism of the US mission in Afghanistan, just as the Biden administration struggles to evacuate Americans and Afghans. from Kabul airport in a chaotic rush.
The report, entitled "What We Must Learn: Lessons From Twenty Years of Rebuilding Afghanistan," points out how much remains to be done.
"After 13 years of oversight, the cumulative list of systemic challenges that SIGAR and other oversight bodies have identified is staggering," the report says.
The document, the 11th published by SIGAR on lessons learned, describes how the US has invested resources and lives in an impossible and ill-defined mission.
Although it points to positive points, such as the reduction in infant mortality rates, the increase in GDP per capita and the increase in literacy rates, the report is a litany of incompetence, interference, obfuscation and wishful thinking.
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It also points to the role that US officials played in misinterpreting and sometimes disguising conditions on the ground, ignoring them when they did not fit a narrative of progress.
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"As security deteriorated and demands on donors increased, so did the pressure to demonstrate progress," SIGAR said.
"US officials created explicit deadlines in the mistaken belief that a decision in Washington could transform the calculus of complex Afghan institutions, power brokers and communities contested by the Taliban."
"Rather than reform and improve, Afghan institutions and power brokers found ways to co-opt the funds for their own ends, which only worsened the problems that these programs had to address," SIGAR said.
"When US officials finally recognized this dynamic, they simply found new ways to ignore conditions on the ground."
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Conditions that got worse for years
Although life expectancy increased by 10 years to 65, the infant mortality rate fell by more than 50% and Afghanistan's GDP nearly doubled, other trends continued to move in the opposite direction, including the security of the child. country.
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The Taliban controlled more territory than at any other time in the past 20 years, were at their strongest in two decades, and carried out an ongoing campaign against Afghanistan's security forces.
Over the past year, the Afghan military has been the target of an average of 80 to 120 attacks a day, even as the Taliban refrained from attacking US forces.
As a result, the fear for personal safety "has never been greater."
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At the same time, the poppy crop used to make the drugs whose sale partially finances the Taliban has steadily increased, even as the United States spent billions to reverse it.
"It is no wonder that Afghanistan continues to rank among the most corrupt countries in the world," SIGAR wrote.
According to the report, US reconstruction officials often misunderstood Afghanistan and empowered the wrong people, fueling corruption.
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US officials "often empowered agents who took advantage of the population or diverted US aid from its intended recipients to enrich and empower themselves and their allies," SIGAR said.
"Lack of knowledge at the local level meant that projects aimed at mitigating conflict often exacerbated it, and even inadvertently funded insurgents."
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Due to pervasive institutional corruption, the United States bypassed government channels in delivering aid, but the approach left Afghan officials without the expertise they needed to oversee their own programs.
Even when programs were successful in the short term, the lack of competent oversight meant that the programs could not last because the Afghans in charge were "poorly equipped, trained or motivated."
And the United States and its allies on the ground never made the country safe enough to actually allow their rebuilding efforts.
"The absence of violence was a fundamental precondition for everything US officials tried to do in Afghanistan, yet the US effort to rebuild the country was carried out while it was being torn apart," he said. the SIGAR.
The creation of a capable and well-equipped Afghan military and police forces was critical to the success of the American mission, and was a key component of an Afghan government capable of sustaining itself and leading the country.
But the United States was never able to establish such a cohesive force, despite spending $ 83 billion on training and equipping Afghanistan's National Defense and Security Forces for 20 years.
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Afghanistan's military replaced a quarter of its force annually, SIGAR wrote, while the forces received insufficient training.
Rather than contributing to the security of the country, these poorly trained forces "actually contribute to insecurity."
The government itself, created through elections with the help of the United States, never found the legitimacy it needed to gain the support of the population.
"Poor security has critically undermined the electoral process and the legitimacy of its elected officials," the report notes.
Counterproductive U.S. Efforts in Afghanistan
Often times, the United States took counterproductive actions in pursuit of "impractical or conceptually incoherent goals," SIGAR wrote.
Even when it was trying to root out corruption, the US was pouring billions of dollars into the country to try to boost the economy, fueling the very corruption it was seeking to eliminate.
He tried to empower the Afghan army, but only with weapons and equipment that he believed the Afghans could maintain, some of which have now fallen into the hands of the Taliban.
The United States also tried to build an enduring electoral process and a democratic tradition from scratch, while trying to respect the sovereignty of Afghanistan.
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If there was a middle ground to these spectra, "American officials were rarely able to find it."
And yet the report warns that US politicians and officials are unlikely to learn the necessary lessons from Afghanistan.
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Despite "widespread recognition" that reconstruction missions in war zones "tend to go wrong," the report warns that major reconstruction efforts start small, and the United States could "slide down this slope again in another. place and that the result is similar to that of Afghanistan. "
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