“Hubris and mendacity” characterize the U.S. approach to rebuilding Afghanistan, according to the federal watchdog monitoring the $132 billion of taxpayers’ money allotted for reconstruction in the war-torn country since 2002.
A damning new report by John Sopko, special inspector general for Afghan reconstruction, comes amid fresh hopes of a peace deal to end a conflict that has bedeviled successive U.S. presidents at a cost of more than 2,000 U.S. lives.
Sopko warns that hopes of future security could be dashed if the world turns its back on the nation where American troops ousted the Taliban from power in 2001. And he said years of misguided U.S. policies meant that the risk of insecurity would likely remain long after any agreement.
“Hubris was that we actually thought we could turn a country as poor as Afghanistan, as beaten up after 40 years of war, with every major infrastructure and every government institution destroyed — we had this hubris that we could come in and turn it into a little America,” he said.
“I upset my Norwegian friends when I say it but this isn’t Norway, guys.”
He added that it was very difficult to set about “nation building” in a country riven by factional rivalries, a weak central government and pockmarked by decades of war.
“It is relatively easy to track down bad guys and kill them,” he said. “When you are trying to build an army and a police force and a civil service and rule of law and a government in the midst of a war, it’s like building an aircraft while in flight. That’s hubris.”
Problems were exacerbated, he said, by public figures who offered an optimistic picture of progress.
“And mendacity because we oversold it to the American taxpayer. We oversold our capability, we oversold the success,” he said.
“Too many people witnessed it, going up and testifying to Congress, giving press releases with only the rosy picture — how easy it is, rebuilding all the roads, the Afghans love us, the military is fighting, our troops will come back by Thanksgiving.”
Sopko’s bleak assessment came with a list of eight threats to the country’s long-term stability: Widespread insecurity, the difficulty of disarming 60,000 Taliban fighters, underdeveloped police capacity, endemic corruption, a feeble economy, a booming trade in narcotics, threats to women’s rights, and weak oversight of foreign spending.
Those risks underscore the difficulty facing Donald Trump as he looks to make good on a promise to bring home the remaining 14,000 U.S. troops in Afghanistan.
Zalmay Khalilzad, Mr Trump’s special representative for Afghanistan reconciliation, recently embarked on a tour of Europe, the Middle East and South Asia to promote fresh peace talks.
