A scathing report by a government watchdog agency concludes that the U.S. intervention in Afghanistan made the country’s already endemic corruption far worse, and ended up sabotaging success of the U.S. mission by effectively funding and fueling the insurgency and stoking popular grievances.
“Corruption undermined the U.S. mission in Afghanistan by fueling grievances against the Afghan government and channeling material support to the insurgency,” the report concluded.
John Sopko, the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction, released details of the first ever “lessons learned” report on how tens of billions of U.S. tax dollars were wasted, lost, stolen and misspent, undercutting the U.S. goal of rebuilding a stable society.
“Our analysis reveals that corruption substantially undermined the U.S. mission in Afghanistan from the very beginning of Operation Enduring Freedom. We found that corruption cut across all aspects of the reconstruction effort, jeopardizing progress made in security, rule of law, governance, and economic growth,” the report says.
Sopko, a former federal prosecutor, said his office found widespread corruption in U.S.-funded projects, investigations that implicated federal employees, military officers, enlisted men, American contractors, as well as Afghan and third-country nationals.
“Our report recounts how the United States collaborated with abusive and corrupt warlords, militias and power brokers,” Sopko said in a speech at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington. “These man gained position of authority in the Afghan government which further enabled them to dip their hands into the streams of cash pouring into the small and fragile Afghan economy.”
The report found a number of factors combined to create a perverse incentive to misspend billions of dollars, including a general lack of oversight, pressure to spend the money quickly, and the desire to show quick results.
U.S. officials were concerned they needed to fully spend the money in accounts or risk not getting funded in the next round of appropriations.
The result was that U.S. funds were ending up in the hands of insurgency groups, creating resentment and distrust among the Afghan populace.
While the report makes 11 recommendations, Sopko says the most important lesson learned is that anti-corruption efforts must be a top priority so that corruption does not sabotage overall policy objectives.
The full report, “Corruption in Conflict: Lessons from the U.S. Experience in Afghanistan,” is below.
Corruption in conflict: Lessons from the U.S. experience in Afghanistan by mglennonexaminer on Scribd
