U.S. spent more on Afghanistan rebuild than Marshall Plan; nothing to show after two decades of war

The U.S. government spent more money on the ambitious but ultimately futile effort to create a stable and democratic Afghanistan than it did on the post-World War II Marshall Plan, which rehabilitated more than a dozen European countries ravaged by conflict.

Congress appropriated just over $148 billion for Afghan reconstruction from 2002 to 2025. About $88 billion of that was spent creating a military that swiftly collapsed in August 2021 in the face of pressure from the Taliban, Gene Aloise, the acting special inspector general in charge of U.S. reconstruction efforts in Afghanistan, told the Defense Writers Group on Wednesday.

Those figures don’t include the $763 billion spent arming the Afghan military and security services during the two-decade war, or the $14 billion used to resettle about 200,000 Afghans in the U.S. after the resignation and flight of President Ashraf Ghani, officials said Wednesday while releasing the final report from the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction, or SIGAR, the watchdog agency created by Congress.

By comparison, the European Recovery Program, better known as the Marshall Plan, cost American taxpayers about $135 billion in today’s dollars to rebuild 16 countries, including key World War II allies such as Britain and France.

Mr. Aloise knew the task ahead would be daunting after speaking with a three-star general at a U.S. base in Kabul during his first visit to Afghanistan.

“He had a big problem. He had to spend $1 billion by the end of the year. He had one month to do it,” Mr. Aloise said. “He had no idea what he was going to spend that money on.”

The general rebuffed him when Mr. Aloise asked whether there was anything SIGAR could do. The Defense Department had no intention of returning the unspent funds, he was told.

Mr. Aloise blamed corruption by Afghan officials for most of the waste from America’s longest war. He compared the government in Kabul to a “white-collar criminal enterprise.”

“Corruption affected everything,” he told reporters. “It turned the people against the government we were trying to build there. It weakened the armed forces. It weakened everything we tried to do.”

The true cost of the war was more than the dollars spent propping up an Afghan government that fell once the U.S. military was out of the picture. It included 2,450 U.S. service members who were killed and 20,760 who were wounded in combat, along with 66,000 Afghan troops and 48,000 civilians who were killed.

“The cost was much higher than just the money,” Mr. Aloise said.

The 200-member SIGAR staff faced challenges in getting their message heard by top military and government leaders, despite their quarterly reports tracking the rampant waste, fraud and abuse in Afghanistan.

“We were fighting a war [and] we were just a little blip in this whole room of noise,” Mr. Aloise said. “It was hard for us.”

About $7.1 billion worth of U.S.-funded military weapons and hardware was left behind in Afghanistan when American troops completed their withdrawal in August 2021. Intended for the Afghan National Defense and Security Forces, the weapons fell into the hands of the Taliban after the collapse of the U.S.-backed government.

The figures don’t tell the whole story. SIGAR officials said more than $24 billion in military infrastructure and $24 billion in civilian infrastructure — all U.S.-built and paid for — was there for the taking by the Taliban when the U.S. left.

“And that doesn’t include the $1.5 billion we spent on the U.S. Embassy, which is sitting there empty,” Mr. Aloise said.

The SIGAR auditors were sometimes blocked by U.S. agencies involved in the war effort. They often identified Afghan officials who were receiving bribes or kickbacks, only to be told they were working for the CIA or other government organizations.

“We were told ‘hands off. You can’t go after those guys,’” Mr. Aloise said. “We did what we could do, [but] there was a lot more that we knew about.”

Despite the uphill battles, the SIGAR efforts saved the American taxpayers more than $4.6 billion. Their audits and investigators identified more than 1,300 instances of waste, fraud and abuse totaling more than $29 billion, Mr. Aloise said.

Mr. Aloise said the Obama and Trump administrations were largely supportive of the auditors’ work. However, he slammed the Biden administration for shutting them out for a year after the collapse of Afghanistan. Their position was that SIGAR’s mandate ended once U.S. troops were no longer there.

“They wouldn’t talk to us. They wouldn’t work with our people. They told their people not to work with our people,” he said. “It was terrible. Never in 50 years have I seen such pushback. It took a bipartisan effort in Congress to get that work started again.”

After the collapse of the government in Kabul, the Pentagon launched what became the largest noncombatant evacuation operation in U.S. history. The U.S. shuttled out tens of thousands of Afghans, many who had worked with American forces and were facing serious threats from the fast-advancing Taliban forces.

Republican and Democratic administrations promised to bring stability and democracy to Afghanistan, but despite the cost in blood and treasure, they ultimately delivered neither, SIGAR said.