John Sopko, the U.S. Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR), testified this week to just how much of a failure two decades of US war in Afghanistan has become. Speaking on March 16 to the National Security subcommittee of the House Oversight Committee, he said that the war-shattered nation “may be fighting for its very survival.” After nearly two decades of war, tens of thousands of dead and wounded American troops, countless more Afghans, and $143 billion in U.S. reconstruction support, Afghanistan’s prospects for successfully governing and defending itself remain far off, he said, reported military.com.
Sopko did not take a position on whether U.S. troops should stay in Afghanistan or go, saying instead that Congress and the Biden administration need to figure out whether, and to what extent, U.S. support for Afghanistan’s reconstruction will continue. He warned the subcommittee that the collapse of the Afghan regime in 1992 followed not the Soviet Union’s 1989 troop withdrawal, but Moscow’s withdrawal of funding.
And in another alarming sign, he said Afghan security forces are “nowhere near achieving self-sufficiency.” The Afghans cannot maintain their own equipment; manage their supply chains; or train new soldiers, pilots, or policemen without the Defense Department’s 13,000 contractors, who also are supposed to be withdrawn from Afghanistan on May 1 under the terms of the agreement, he said. Without those contractors, Sopko added, the Pentagon believes every last aircraft in the Afghan air force will be out of commission and unable to carry out combat missions after a few months. If U.S. troops, contractors, and funding — about 80% of the revenues the Afghan government relies upon come from the U.S. and donors — are all withdrawn, “it’s a disaster for Afghanistan,” he said.
Would another decade or two of doing the same thing really generate different results?
