The collapse of the U.S.-backed government in Afghanistan on Aug. 15, 2021, revealed what little American lives and money had purchased over 20 years there. It also laid bare a gaping disconnect between reality and what senior U.S. officials had been telling Americans for decades: that success was just around the corner.As the special inspector general for Afghanistan reconstruction since 2012, my staff and I have audited and investigated U.S. programs and spending to rebuild Afghanistan ....In hundreds of reports over the last 12 years, we have detailed a long list of systemic problems: The U.S. government struggled to carry out a coherent strategy, fostered overly ambitious expectations, started unsustainable projects and did not understand the country or its people. American agencies measured success not by what they accomplished, but by dollars spent or checklists of completed tasks.Why did so many senior officials tell Congress and the public, year after year, that success was on the horizon when they knew otherwise?A perverse incentive drove our system. To win promotions and bigger salaries, military and civilian leaders felt they had to sell their tours of duty, deployments, programs and projects as successes — even when they were not. Leaders tended to report and highlight favorable information while obscuring that which pointed to failure. After all, failures do not lead to an ambassadorship or an elevation to general.The sudden collapse of the Afghan government and rise of the Taliban showed that the United States could not buy favorable Afghan perceptions of the country’s corrupt leaders and government, or of America’s intentions.
Yet over two decades — and even as Afghan provinces fell like dominoes in the summer of 2021 — I do not recall any senior official telling Congress or the American people that failure was a real possibility.Official statements across successive U.S. presidential administrations were, in my view, often simply untrue. Just six days before the Afghan government collapsed, the Pentagon press secretary declared that Afghanistan had more than 300,000 soldiers and police officers, even though the special inspector general’s office had been warning for years that no one really knew how many soldiers and policemen were available, nor what their operational capabilities were. As early as 2015, I informed Congress that corrupt Afghan officials were listing “ghost” soldiers and police officers on rosters, and pocketing the salaries. (emphases added)
One of the problems the US could not fix was the fact that Afghanistan was and still is a true kleptocracy. Feeding into that intractable problem was all US money flowing through the various NGO and US agencies. Everybody wanted to keep the cash flowing. What happened in Vietnam also happened in Afghanistan.
In 2015, anti-corruption expert Sarah Chayes published her book, Thieves of State: Why Corruption Threatens Global Security [1]. Chayes made it obvious obvious that the US was doomed to fail. It took years before she understood what Afghanistan was really like, i.e., Vietnam before the US got kicked out:
Chayes co-founded a charity “of unclear mission,” that was run by President Hamid Karzai's brother, Qayum. “At first I believed Qayum’s description of himself as constituting a ‘loyal opposition’ to his younger brother the president. . . . . Not for years would I begin systematically comparing his seductively incisive words with his deeds. .... I had, in other words, been an accessory to fraud.”
One big point here is that kleptocracy is real and it really does threaten global security. Chayes warned us again about corruption in 2024 a few weeks before the election[1]. People other than Chayes have been warning about growing corruption in the US. All the warnings have been ignored.
The US is on the verge of becoming a true kleptocracy run by various morally rotted, radical right authoritarian kleptocrats, e.g., Christian nationalists, the brazenly autocratic DJT, his autocratic Republican Party, the authoritarian US supreme court, and various oligarch billionaires and multi-, multi-millionaires.
Too bad we do not learn from our mistakes. This time it will very likely cost us dearly. Trillions in theft per year is a scenario that is now truly on the horizon. We are powerless to stop it because both parties want the cash.
One last point: Was the US government really ignorant about how bad the situation in Afghanistan was? I rather doubt it. But if it really was mostly ignorant, that points to gross incompetence, deep corruption and/or complicity in the charade, knowing or not.
Footnote:
1. In Oct. 2024, Chayes urgently warned about corruption among Democrats and the Democratic Party. By then, she knew that the Republicans already were truly kleptocratic. The GOP had become completely impervious to warnings about deepening corruption:
For a party that wraps itself in the mantle of truth and integrity, pointing across the aisle and saying “they’re worse” is not good enough. For the sake of their electoral fortunes, not to mention the country they purport to serve, Democrats must show voters a serious plan to curb corruption and corporate crime — including within their own ranks.Since 1987, U.S. Supreme Court justices appointed by Democrats have largely concurred in a series of decisions narrowing what legally qualifies as corruption.Although liberal justices dissented in the most recent such ruling — which legalized what amounts to bribes, so long as the money is paid after the official renders the service — almost all the previous votes in these cases were unanimous.
With this kind of track record, Democrats’ effort to contrast themselves with the lawlessness of Mr. Trump’s Republicans can be taken only so seriously.
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