US aid policies undermined success of Afghanistan mission, says watchdog chief

Source: The Guardian

US aid policies undermined success of Afghanistan mission, says watchdog chief

Poor oversight, lack of understanding and weak collaboration between allies contributed to ease of Taliban takeover, conclude US and UK aid bodies at London conference

Patrick Wintour, diplomatic editor
Tue 11 Jul 2023 13.11 BST
Last modified on Tue 11 Jul 2023 15.08 BST

America’s huge, badly-coordinated and politically-driven aid programme in Afghanistan engendered the corruption that undermined its entire mission and turned Afghans away from the western coalition, according to the head of a US aid watchdog.

“We did not really understand Afghanistan or how it worked as a country,” John Sopko, the special inspector general for Afghanistan reconstruction (Sigar), told a conference at the defence and security thinktank the Royal United Services Institute.

“We sent so much money so quickly into so poor a country with so little oversight we were actually giving more money than the gross domestic product of Afghanistan for so many years,” Sopko said.

He said unrealistic timelines set by Washington and Brussels had “led to a desire to show success”.

“We do not want to be honest and as a result we learned how to do the wrong thing perfectly by checking boxes. ...

-snip-

Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2023/jul/11/us-aid-policies-undermined-success-of-afghanistan-mission-says-watchdog-chief