US mission in Afghanistan a failure: Government watchdog

The report details how 20 years and $145 billion of effort were often wasted because projects weren't tailored to the complex realities on the ground in Afghanistan.

The Taliban's return to power has ended America's two-decade effort to build a democratic society in its mold in Afghanistan. But that effort, despite its billions of dollars and tens of thousands of lives, was doomed virtually from the start by a galling failure to understand the country and a willful disregard for local realities on the ground, according to a scathing new report. The U.S. Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction, or SIGAR, blasted successive U.S. administrations for lacking the "necessary mindset, expertise, and resources to develop and manage the strategy to rebuild Afghanistan," in its latest report released Tuesday. The report, prepared before Kabul's fall, found that while the U.S. achieved some important successes for the Afghan people, those gains would be lost if the Taliban took control. "The U.S. government struggled to develop a coherent strategy, understand how long the reconstruction mission would take, ensure its projects were sustainable, staff the mission with trained professionals, account for the challenges posed by insecurity, tailor efforts to the Afghan context, and understand the impact of programs," the report said.