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KABUL: Billions of dollars in U.S. foreign aid to Afghanistan has been lost to widespread waste, and endemic corruption in the past 10 years, the US oversight authority on Afghanistan reconstruction says.
The US Special Inspector General for Afghanistan, SIGAR, in a new report said that more than $19 billion in U.S. aid has ‘disappeared’ and ‘wasted’ in Afghanistan.
The report, conducted from January 2018 to December 2019, reviewed reports on US assistance to Afghanistan and found that in addition to the $15.5 billion it reported in 2018, another $4.3 billion of US aid has been wasted and embezzled.
From 2002 to 2019, the US Congress allocated $134 billion for Afghanistan reconstruction, according to SIGAR. After reviewing around $63 billion of the aid, SIGAR found that about $19 billion in US aid to Afghanistan was lost, wasted, embezzled from May 2009 to December 2019.
Of that money, SIGAR says, $1.5 billion of American taxpayers was wasted, another $300 million was embezzled and $34 million squandered.
Of that money, $106 billion was allocated to the fight against drugs, which, according to SIGAR, has not achieved anything.
SIGAR says its operations until December 2019 has led to saving $3.2 billion from US taxpayers’ money.
The Afghan government has not yet commented.
