he U.S. involvement in Afghanistan began on October 7, 2001, with international support and clear goals: to drive out al Qaeda and to prevent its hosts, the Taliban, from allowing Afghanistan to be used as a base for terrorist operations—tasks our military accomplished within weeks. It ended almost 20 years later with a victorious Taliban in control of the country and scenes of utter chaos as refugees swarmed the Kabul airport.
How did such an eminently justifiable mission, launched by the mightiest military on earth, end so ingloriously?
Historians will be writing the saga of the United States’ “longest war” for decades to come, but even now, so soon after the event, it is clear that key decisions made across the span of four administrations pushed us toward this result—all of which illustrate our failure to actually implement a “whole-of-government” approach to modern warfare and development assistance. I can say this with some confidence, because I saw our efforts in Afghanistan unfold from a uniquely privileged vantage point over the last 10 years—as the head of the only independent U.S. government agency focused solely on Afghanistan and responsible for looking at all U.S. agencies involved in the $146 billion reconstruction effort there.
Through SIGAR’s many products—audits, inspections, quarterly reports, and criminal investigations—we have learned much about the many things that can go wrong when the United States gets involved in an overseas contingency operation. Though the average American rarely realizes it, we do so all the time: U.S. military forces and USAID are currently active in Mali, Burkina Faso, Somalia, Yemen, and Ukraine.
In an effort to synthesize what we have learned about what does and doesn’t work in Afghanistan, and apply those insights to future reconstruction efforts, I created the Lessons Learned Program (LLP). So far, SIGAR has issued 11 lessons learned reports, based on extensive research written by some of the most experienced experts in Afghanistan in the U.S. government.
From my perspective, then, here is my take on the key turning points that got us to where we are – all of which are linked to failures in our “whole-of-government” approach:
Our “whole-of-government” approach was based on a strategy that kept changing.
The Bush administration’s “light footprint” approach toward eliminating al Qaeda and routing the Taliban was based on the theory that we could get in, get the job done, and get out quickly. Partly, this was based on a desire not to look like an invading colonizing force to the fiercely independent Afghans. But it was also based on an ideological aversion to “nation building”—at least when nation-building took the form of long-term, expensive foreign entanglements.
By 2002, with al Qaeda effectively out of commission and the Taliban routed, we viewed Afghanistan as a “post-conflict” country where the United States could plant the seeds of democracy with a few humanitarian programs and have all our troops home by 2004. This was a wildly optimistic and deeply flawed assumption. As we now know, the Taliban almost immediately began regrouping, and by 2003 it began launching new attacks at coalition forces from its bases in the southern and eastern parts of the country, where it had always enjoyed grassroots support.
Our “whole-of-government” approach existed mainly on paper.
In theory, the U.S. State Department is in charge of leading U.S. reconstruction efforts in Afghanistan. In reality, State has neither the money nor the staff to do anything of the sort. In 2021, Congress appropriated $696 billion for DOD, compared to $55 billion for State. Its 7,900 foreign service officers—the backbone of the agency—only slightly outnumber the musicians employed in DOD bands. The U.S. repeatedly undertook programs in Afghanistan without first checking to make sure the implementing agencies had enough staff to see them through. At one point, a USAID employee told SIGAR that the organization was so desperate for additional staff that they were hiring anyone with “a pulse and a master’s degree.”
By 2006, the Bush administration realized that to build a government strong enough to defeat the Taliban meant helping that government develop basic institutions: a civilian police force, a reliable court system, a strong military—in other words, nation building. The first attempts were limited and underresourced. When U.S. policymakers realized more was required, we overcorrected. That brings us to the next key turning point:
We gave the Afghans too much money.
From 2006 to 2008, the Bush administration dramatically ramped up its funding for Afghanistan reconstruction: the amount allocated in 2007 (roughly $10 billion) was three times the amount allocated the year before. Meanwhile, members of Congress, impatient to see some results after five years of conflict, began demanding deadlines for showing progress.
The result: an influx of money into one of the poorest economies in the world, where corruption was already endemic—essentially, adding fuel to a smoldering fire.
We sent in even more money and troops—and then set an unrealistic deadline for what all that was supposed to achieve.
In 2009, the Obama administration decided on a new plan for Afghanistan: a “surge” of troops and reconstruction aid. But it was a self-limited surge: after 18 months, the Obama administration said, the surge would have either worked, and Afghans would be able to assume responsibility for the fight against the Taliban—or it would fail, meaning it was time to give up.
Politically, admitting that we were giving up was a non-starter. Yet this full-court press, combined with an 18-month deadline, almost ensured failure: It created unrealistic goals, pressure to show short-term results, and a spending spree that exacerbated existing corruption among Afghan officials. Monitoring and oversight of projects funded with U.S. taxpayer dollars was cursory at best, and at times nonexistent. By the time the Obama administration took action to correct that last problem, it was too late: corruption had become a wildfire.
Corruption would hobble the United States’ every reconstruction effort in Afghanistan, especially when it came to building up its military. To those of us who have monitored events in Afghanistan, and there are many, it came as no surprise to learn in the final days of the Ghani government that a significant percentage of the 344,000-member Afghan National Defense and Security Forces existed only on paper. The missing were “ghost soldiers”—invented by corrupt commanders or Ministry of Defense officials who pocketed the salaries.
Throughout our involvement in Afghanistan, the United States often seemed to be pursuing mutually incompatible goals. We decried corruption in the Afghan government while, for expediency’s sake, our own military partnered with local militia commanders who were known human rights abusers. We announced a goal of creating an independent, self-sustaining Afghan military while training it to fight effectively only with our air support—dooming it to failure once that air support was gone. We announced long-term goals, but tried to implement them with military and contractor personnel deployed for one-year tours of duty, creating constant turnovers that came to be known as “the annual lobotomy.”
The U.S. experience in Afghanistan was by no means an unmitigated failure: Among other things, we have helped the Afghans make great strides in health care, maternal mortality rates, and education. The two decades we spent there created a generation of educated young women, aware of their rights and their potential to be full participants in society—assuming the Taliban ever realizes it can ill afford to squander the talents of half of its population. However imperfectly it executed its plans, the United States had honorable intentions.
SIGAR’s work has demonstrated that no single policy decision or Administration led to the failure of the U.S. efforts in Afghanistan. Rather, it was a series of mistaken decisions, made over two decades, each building on the other, that led us to this point. The seeds of Afghanistan’s collapse were sown well before President Ashraf Ghani fled and the Taliban fighters strolled into Kabul.
The ultimate verdict of history on U.S. involvement in Afghanistan is still being written. At the moment, however, it is hard to erase the mental image of Afghans desperate to leave the country clinging to the outside of a U.S Air Force C-17 as it taxied down the runway. There is a popular aphorism that what seems like failure is merely a learning opportunity. If so, we have a major learning opportunity. Next time—and there will be a next time—we have to figure out a whole-of-government approach that actually works.
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Needed: A Whole-of-Government Approach That Actually Works
Photo by Farid Ershad via Unsplash.
November 12, 2021
Flawed decisions on Afghanistan spanning four presidential administrations prove the need for a functional whole-of-government approach to warfare and development, writes Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction John F. Sopko.
T
he U.S. involvement in Afghanistan began on October 7, 2001, with international support and clear goals: to drive out al Qaeda and to prevent its hosts, the Taliban, from allowing Afghanistan to be used as a base for terrorist operations—tasks our military accomplished within weeks. It ended almost 20 years later with a victorious Taliban in control of the country and scenes of utter chaos as refugees swarmed the Kabul airport.
How did such an eminently justifiable mission, launched by the mightiest military on earth, end so ingloriously?
Historians will be writing the saga of the United States’ “longest war” for decades to come, but even now, so soon after the event, it is clear that key decisions made across the span of four administrations pushed us toward this result—all of which illustrate our failure to actually implement a “whole-of-government” approach to modern warfare and development assistance. I can say this with some confidence, because I saw our efforts in Afghanistan unfold from a uniquely privileged vantage point over the last 10 years—as the head of the only independent U.S. government agency focused solely on Afghanistan and responsible for looking at all U.S. agencies involved in the $146 billion reconstruction effort there.
Through SIGAR’s many products—audits, inspections, quarterly reports, and criminal investigations—we have learned much about the many things that can go wrong when the United States gets involved in an overseas contingency operation. Though the average American rarely realizes it, we do so all the time: U.S. military forces and USAID are currently active in Mali, Burkina Faso, Somalia, Yemen, and Ukraine.
In an effort to synthesize what we have learned about what does and doesn’t work in Afghanistan, and apply those insights to future reconstruction efforts, I created the Lessons Learned Program (LLP). So far, SIGAR has issued 11 lessons learned reports, based on extensive research written by some of the most experienced experts in Afghanistan in the U.S. government.
From my perspective, then, here is my take on the key turning points that got us to where we are – all of which are linked to failures in our “whole-of-government” approach:
Our “whole-of-government” approach was based on a strategy that kept changing.
The Bush administration’s “light footprint” approach toward eliminating al Qaeda and routing the Taliban was based on the theory that we could get in, get the job done, and get out quickly. Partly, this was based on a desire not to look like an invading colonizing force to the fiercely independent Afghans. But it was also based on an ideological aversion to “nation building”—at least when nation-building took the form of long-term, expensive foreign entanglements.
By 2002, with al Qaeda effectively out of commission and the Taliban routed, we viewed Afghanistan as a “post-conflict” country where the United States could plant the seeds of democracy with a few humanitarian programs and have all our troops home by 2004. This was a wildly optimistic and deeply flawed assumption. As we now know, the Taliban almost immediately began regrouping, and by 2003 it began launching new attacks at coalition forces from its bases in the southern and eastern parts of the country, where it had always enjoyed grassroots support.
Our “whole-of-government” approach existed mainly on paper.
In theory, the U.S. State Department is in charge of leading U.S. reconstruction efforts in Afghanistan. In reality, State has neither the money nor the staff to do anything of the sort. In 2021, Congress appropriated $696 billion for DOD, compared to $55 billion for State. Its 7,900 foreign service officers—the backbone of the agency—only slightly outnumber the musicians employed in DOD bands. The U.S. repeatedly undertook programs in Afghanistan without first checking to make sure the implementing agencies had enough staff to see them through. At one point, a USAID employee told SIGAR that the organization was so desperate for additional staff that they were hiring anyone with “a pulse and a master’s degree.”
By 2006, the Bush administration realized that to build a government strong enough to defeat the Taliban meant helping that government develop basic institutions: a civilian police force, a reliable court system, a strong military—in other words, nation building. The first attempts were limited and underresourced. When U.S. policymakers realized more was required, we overcorrected. That brings us to the next key turning point:
We gave the Afghans too much money.
From 2006 to 2008, the Bush administration dramatically ramped up its funding for Afghanistan reconstruction: the amount allocated in 2007 (roughly $10 billion) was three times the amount allocated the year before. Meanwhile, members of Congress, impatient to see some results after five years of conflict, began demanding deadlines for showing progress.
The result: an influx of money into one of the poorest economies in the world, where corruption was already endemic—essentially, adding fuel to a smoldering fire.
We sent in even more money and troops—and then set an unrealistic deadline for what all that was supposed to achieve.
In 2009, the Obama administration decided on a new plan for Afghanistan: a “surge” of troops and reconstruction aid. But it was a self-limited surge: after 18 months, the Obama administration said, the surge would have either worked, and Afghans would be able to assume responsibility for the fight against the Taliban—or it would fail, meaning it was time to give up.
Politically, admitting that we were giving up was a non-starter. Yet this full-court press, combined with an 18-month deadline, almost ensured failure: It created unrealistic goals, pressure to show short-term results, and a spending spree that exacerbated existing corruption among Afghan officials. Monitoring and oversight of projects funded with U.S. taxpayer dollars was cursory at best, and at times nonexistent. By the time the Obama administration took action to correct that last problem, it was too late: corruption had become a wildfire.
Corruption would hobble the United States’ every reconstruction effort in Afghanistan, especially when it came to building up its military. To those of us who have monitored events in Afghanistan, and there are many, it came as no surprise to learn in the final days of the Ghani government that a significant percentage of the 344,000-member Afghan National Defense and Security Forces existed only on paper. The missing were “ghost soldiers”—invented by corrupt commanders or Ministry of Defense officials who pocketed the salaries.
Throughout our involvement in Afghanistan, the United States often seemed to be pursuing mutually incompatible goals. We decried corruption in the Afghan government while, for expediency’s sake, our own military partnered with local militia commanders who were known human rights abusers. We announced a goal of creating an independent, self-sustaining Afghan military while training it to fight effectively only with our air support—dooming it to failure once that air support was gone. We announced long-term goals, but tried to implement them with military and contractor personnel deployed for one-year tours of duty, creating constant turnovers that came to be known as “the annual lobotomy.”
The U.S. experience in Afghanistan was by no means an unmitigated failure: Among other things, we have helped the Afghans make great strides in health care, maternal mortality rates, and education. The two decades we spent there created a generation of educated young women, aware of their rights and their potential to be full participants in society—assuming the Taliban ever realizes it can ill afford to squander the talents of half of its population. However imperfectly it executed its plans, the United States had honorable intentions.
SIGAR’s work has demonstrated that no single policy decision or Administration led to the failure of the U.S. efforts in Afghanistan. Rather, it was a series of mistaken decisions, made over two decades, each building on the other, that led us to this point. The seeds of Afghanistan’s collapse were sown well before President Ashraf Ghani fled and the Taliban fighters strolled into Kabul.
The ultimate verdict of history on U.S. involvement in Afghanistan is still being written. At the moment, however, it is hard to erase the mental image of Afghans desperate to leave the country clinging to the outside of a U.S Air Force C-17 as it taxied down the runway. There is a popular aphorism that what seems like failure is merely a learning opportunity. If so, we have a major learning opportunity. Next time—and there will be a next time—we have to figure out a whole-of-government approach that actually works.
