The final report issued by the Special IG for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR) marks the conclusion of a mission marked by extraordinary ambition and extraordinary failure. As SIGAR prepares to shut down in January 2026, its last comprehensive assessment reveals a deeply flawed reconstruction project. One that consumed immense resources but delivered little long-term stability to Afghanistan.
From 2002 to 2021, the US allocated more than $144 billion toward rebuilding Afghanistan, more than the Marshall Plan would have cost in today’s dollars. Yet the outcomes tell a very different story. Afghanistan, unlike post-war Europe, was not a country with functioning institutions waiting to be rebuilt. It was a fragmented, underdeveloped nation emerging from decades of conflict. The U.S. attempted to construct new systems entirely from the ground up. A modern army, democratic institutions, infrastructure networks, and a market economy.
SIGAR notes that these ambitions were unrealistic. The mission expanded far beyond counterterrorism and moved into full-scale state-building, without a clear strategy, an understanding of Afghan society, or the capacity to oversee such an enormous undertaking.
Billions Lost to Waste, Fraud, and Unrealistic Planning
SIGAR’s final report documents between $26 and $29.2 billion lost to waste, fraud, and abuse. The overwhelming majority, over 90 percent, was systemic waste: projects that were poorly conceived, poorly monitored, or unsustainable for Afghan institutions.
Among the most glaring failures was the U.S. $7.3 billion counternarcotics effort, which did virtually nothing to curb Afghanistan’s role as the world’s largest opium producer. Similar failures plagued infrastructure projects. Afghanistan lacked the capacity to maintain them, that’s why many of them were abandoned or never used
Across the board, SIGAR identified more than 1,900 internal control weaknesses within U.S. agencies. These were not small mistakes. They were structural failures that allowed corruption to thrive and encouraged rapid spending over thoughtful planning.
A Security Sector Built on Dependency, Not Strength
Perhaps the most painful admission in the report concerns the Afghan National Defense and Security Forces (ANDSF). The U.S spent nearly $90 billion building an army and police force designed more for American expectations than Afghan realities. The result was a force dependent on U.S. presence for intelligence, logistics, maintenance, and air power.
Once the U.S. withdrew in August 2021, the ANDSF collapsed in a matter of days. SIGAR concludes that American planners never fully acknowledged that Afghan forces could not operate independently. Corruption in the ranks, inflated troop numbers, poor leadership, and political fragility accelerated the collapse. The security structure, built over two decades, simply could not stand without foreign support.
Financial Opacity and Pentagon Mismanagement
SIGAR also uncovered major accounting failures that distorted the true cost of the mission. The Pentagon overstated Afghan Security Forces Fund (ASFF) spending by at least $2.9 billion, and potentially as much as $9 billion, due to improper financial reporting. Money transferred between accounts was recorded as “spent,” even when no actual purchases or obligations had taken place.
For nearly 15 years, the Department of Defense was unable to properly track billions of dollars. With SIGAR closing, the report urges Congress to continue investigating these discrepancies, highlighting how even basic financial oversight was missing in one of America’s most expensive foreign missions.
The Larger Lesson: Recognizing the Limits of Intervention
SIGAR’s final chapter offers a sobering conclusion: the failure in Afghanistan was not merely a failure of execution but a failure of assumptions. Former American officials interviewed for the report agree that the lofty goals set by Washington may never have been achievable. Attempting to rapidly transform Afghanistan into a stable, democratic state was a mission built on illusions rather than realities.
The report warns that before the U.S. undertakes another nation-building project, policymakers must confront hard truths about the limitations of foreign intervention, the dangers of unrealistic timelines, and the need to understand local dynamics instead of imposing imported models. Money alone cannot buy stability, especially when institutions are weak and conflict persists.
SIGAR Report: A Warning Written in Billions
The closure of SIGAR brings an end to America’s most exhaustive oversight effort abroad. But the lessons from its final report should not fade. Afghanistan’s reconstruction failed long before the Taliban returned to power in 2021. It failed because strategy, accountability, and realism were absent from the very beginning.
SIGAR’s final message is a clear warning: unless the United States learns from Afghanistan, it risks repeating the same costly mistakes elsewhere, sacrificing resources, credibility, and lives in missions that exceed what any foreign power can realistically achieve.
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