Afghanistan Weekly Reader: U.S. Has Spent $90 Billion on Afghan Aid
The evidence of the counterproductive U.S. strategy in Afghanistan continued to pile up this week. The Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction released a quarterly report that found the U.S. has spent almost $90 billion on Afghanistan aid since 2001. SIGAR also investigated programs funded through the Department of Defense’s Afghanistan Infrastructure Fund, and found that the projects are so far behind schedule that they may not show results until after U.S. troops have left the country. Even worse, SIGAR concluded that the concept behind the reconstruction projects is fundamentally flawed. By pouring money into Afghan aid, the U.S. may have created a culture of entitlement.
From ASG
7/31/12
US Taxpayers Bankrolling Abuses at Afghan Hospital
Afghanistan Study Group by Mary Kaszynski
The case of the Afghan hospital is particularly disturbing because the consequences are clear and painful. This is just one example of the corruption in aid to Afghanistan. If $185 million missed the mark, what about the rest of the more than $30 billion in humanitarian and development aid that the U.S. has sent to Afghanistan over the past ten years?
8/1/12
The Counterproductive US Strategy in Afghanistan
Afghanistan Study Group by Mary Kaszynski
For U.S. planners, winning hearts and minds meant spending billions on unsustainable aid projects. That didn’t win hearts and minds, but it did create a culture of entitlement.
ARTICLES
7/30/12
U.S. construction projects in Afghanistan challenged by inspector general’s report
Washington Post by Rajiv Chandrasekaran
A U.S. initiative to spend hundreds of millions of dollars on construction projects in Afghanistan, originally pitched as a vital tool in the military campaign against the Taliban, is running so far behind schedule that it will not yield benefits until most U.S. combat forces have departed the country, according to a government inspection report.
7/29/12
U.S. Says Afghans Abandoned Police Bases
Wall Street Journal by Nathan Hodge
Inspectors from a U.S. government watchdog agency discovered that several American-funded border police bases in Afghanistan have been largely abandoned or left unoccupied, raising questions about the coming hand-over of security duties to local forces.
7/28/12
Retiring Envoy to Afghanistan Exhorts U.S to Heed Its Past
New York Times by Alissa J. Rubin
The American diplomat most associated with the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan says that American policy makers need to learn the lessons of the recent past as they weigh military options for the future, including for Syria and Iran
OPINION
7/31/12
New Republican voices changing the party’s standard rhetoric on war
Seattle Times by Bruce Ramsey
The three candidates quoted here — Baumgartner, Driscoll and Matthews — sound a different tone. They speak from experience. They know war. Whether any of them will win in November I don’t know. The odds are against all of them. But if they don’t change Congress, at least they are changing the conversation in their own party. Regarding war, the Republican Party needs to get beyond the slogan, “Support our troops.”
7/31/12
Mission Failure: Afghanistan
Tomdispatch by Tom Engelhardt
In 2012 – and twice last week – Afghan soldiers, policemen, or security guards, largely in units being trained or mentored by the U.S. or its NATO allies, have turned their guns on those mentors, the people who are funding, supporting, and teaching them, and pulled the trigger.
