how many soldiers in beyond the horizon 2017

forces began spending vast sums of money on reconstruction and social projects. In an attempt to win hearts and minds, U.S. John Pilger: Afghanistan, The Great Game of Smashing Countries The absurdity of all this - and everyone knew it was going on!” Hoh exclaimed. Whether they took it directly or it was the Taliban commander’s cousin that was the contractor, it doesn’t matter. “We’re talking about a fountain of money that the Taliban were happy to take. was directly paying off the Taliban has been an established fact for over a decade, the latest SIGAR report noting that Washington has been “buying” the insurgents’ cooperation, making the Taliban “unofficial subcontractors to the U.S. While this might sound far-fetched to a lay person, the notion that the U.S. Taliban fighters hold American weapons at a checkpoint previously manned by US troops in Kabul, Aug. “The Taliban were making a ton of money off these outposts,” Hoh exclaimed, “and everyone knew exactly where the money was going!” But an equally important factor, Hoh claimed, was that NATO outposts were handing out millions of dollars in cash to local firms and groups as part of their mission - enormous sums in a country where the majority live on less than $2 per day. bases throughout the country? One reason was that they were afraid of U.S.

One officer told Hoh that he controlled only the area “as far as my machine guns reach and the Taliban control everything else.” If that was the case, why didn’t the Taliban overrun any of the network of small U.S. had effectively lost control of Afghanistan. It was absolutely nuts!”īy this time, the U.S. political leaders, in Iraq and Afghanistan, dollars spent equated to things being constructed and effective counterinsurgency …But the Taliban themselves were taking the money! The Taliban guys were doing the construction work. Money being spent on an institutional level was a metric of success. “The way to prove that you were doing your job was by spending money,” Hoh told MintPress, continuing: In 2009, he resigned from his position in the State Department in Zabul Province, Afghanistan, over U.S. military and government focusing on Iraq and Afghanistan. Marine Corps and an official with both the Department of Defense and the State Department, spending almost 12 years in the U.S. MintPress spoke to a person who had been a central part of this bizarre story. Contractors, NGOs and others who were aboard the seemingly endless gravy train also kept quiet as they stuffed their pockets with billions of dollars of public money. There was no incentive to report on financial excesses, fraud or abuse, and barely any oversight over where the money was actually going. Program budgets were massively expanded, often over the objections of USAID and others on the ground, who argued that inundating the country with dollars was not truly winning hearts and minds, and was a wasteful and ineffective strategy. A USAID official told SIGAR, ‘The Hill was always asking, ‘Did you spend the money?’…I didn’t hear many questions about what the effects were. Perversely, because it was the easiest thing to monitor, the amount of money spent by a program often became the most important measure of success. In a region where American troops were barely able to leave their bases without being attacked, “cash spent” became one of the few concrete metrics commanders could report back with any accuracy. But officials in Washington wanted to see quantifiable results. efforts in the country.Īt no point did the U.S. The new report is the latest - and perhaps most critical - of 13 yearly offerings analyzing U.S.

“When you look at how much we spent and what we got for it, it’s mind boggling,” one senior Department of Defense administrator admitted to SIGAR in 2015.Ĭongress founded SIGAR in 2008 to provide neutral and objective oversight into the U.S.’ handling of Afghan reconstruction programs. government body - lays bare the waste and corruption of the whole affair, drawing parallels with famous satires such as “Catch 22” and “M*A*S*H*.” Uncompromising in its frankness, the 124-page report outlines the incompetence, venality and dark absurdity of the whole endeavor. For what, and on what, did the United States spend more than $2 trillion? A newly published study from the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR) - a U.S. Essentially admitting defeat, American planes are beating a hasty and ignominious retreat from Kabul, with images of the withdrawal bearing a striking resemblance to those from the fall of Saigon 46 years previously.Īs the Taliban complete their takeover, many Americans are wondering what it was all about. WASHINGTON - The conflict in Afghanistan - for the U.S.

How many soldiers in beyond the horizon 2017