Inspector general for Afghan reconstruction says 20 year effort is marked by 'too many failures'

The special inspector general for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR) is calling the two-decade effort to rebuild the country a failure. The August 2021 report details the areas in which the American effort to rebuild the country came up far short of the initial goal.

"The extraordinary costs were meant to serve a purpose – though the definition of that purpose evolved over time," reads the 140-page report, alluding the United States' changing goals in the region over the course of its 20-year military presence in Afghanistan. 

"After 13 years of oversight, the cumulative list of systemic challenges SIGAR and other oversight bodies have identified is staggering," reads the report. 

The report estimates that $145 billion American tax dollars were spent attempting to rebuild the country, "its security forces, civilian government institutions, economy, and civil society." It comes in as the Biden administration struggles to evacuate Americans and Afghans from the Kabul international airport in the wake of the country's fall to the Taliban. 

The Defense Department spent an additional $837 billion on war-fighting "during which 2,443 American troops and 1,144 allied troops have been killed and 20,666 U.S. troops injured," the report also found. 

Afghanistan lost 66,000 troops over the course of the war, in addition to nearly 50,000 civilians. Among other conclusions, the report posits that the U.S. and its allies were never able to create a secure enough environment to truly enable lasting reconstruction efforts from an infrastructure or societal perspective.