American taxpayers have lost “billions” of dollars by pouring money into rebuilding Afghanistan with little planning or accountability, said the government’s top watchdog on March 29, 2016.
The problem seems to stem from the United States’ lack of preparation rather than Afghanistan’s culture, said John Sopko, special inspector general for Afghanistan Reconstruction.
“The corruption is probably as bad as it was before,” Sopko told the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review‘s editorial board. “We didn’t help it any by pouring that much money in so quickly without really thinking too hard about what the impact was going to be on the culture, the economy and the corruption. So we made some serious mistakes early on.”
“What we’re seeing are problems that are bigger than Afghanistan,” Sopko said. “I just want to fix things, and we really do need to fix how the (U.S.) government works.”
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