Final watchdog report says billions lost to corruption, mismanagement, and terror-linked groups.
By yourNEWS Media Newsroom
The U.S. government spent nearly $145 billion over two decades attempting to rebuild Afghanistan, with at least $26 billion lost to waste, fraud, and abuse—and hundreds of millions more ending up in Taliban-controlled hands, according to a final report from the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR).
Sigar Final Report by yourNEWS Media
The audit concludes that despite nearly $90 billion allocated for security-sector assistance, Afghanistan’s army and police forces collapsed within days of the U.S. withdrawal in 2021, paving the way for an immediate Taliban takeover. The report called the collapse “stunningly rapid,” exposing “a fragility concealed by years of confident assertions of progress.”
Among the revelations: the United States left behind over $38 billion in military equipment, infrastructure, and civilian assets, much of which was seized or repurposed by Taliban forces. Meanwhile, hundreds of millions in humanitarian and development funds continued to flow after the fall, with SIGAR finding at least fake charities created by the Taliban receiving grants from U.S.-funded programs. The terrorist group also gained roughly $239 million in development assistance when the State Department failed to properly vet award recipients against counterterrorism screening requirements.
The report chronicles more than 1,300 instances of confirmed waste, fraud, or abuse from 2002 to 2021. Examples include $7.3 billion on an ineffective counternarcotics effort that failed to reduce opium production; $4.7 billion for failed stabilization projects; $486 million for unused Afghan Air Force aircraft; $335 million for an inoperative U.S.-funded power plant; and $85 million for an unfinished hotel near the U.S. Embassy in Kabul.
Investigators also criticized early U.S. partnerships with “corrupt, human-rights-abusing powerbrokers,” saying those alliances strengthened the insurgency and undermined the goal of democratic governance.
SIGAR, established by Congress in 2009, will cease operations in January 2026 after documenting what it described as one of the most expensive failed reconstruction efforts in U.S. history. Despite the collapse, the U.S. remains Afghanistan’s largest donor—disbursing more than $3.8 billion in aid since 2021, including $120 million in the first quarter of 2025 alone.
“U.S. efforts in Afghanistan were often trying to create capabilities, systems, and institutions of a type and quality the country had never possessed,” the report concluded. “The result was predictable: a reconstruction effort that was costly, unsustainable, and ultimately failed.”
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