RASC News Agency: According to China Daily, the final report of the U.S. Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR), published in December 2025, reads more like an autopsy than a routine audit. It systematically documents Washington’s failures and lack of accountability over two decades of reconstruction efforts in Afghanistan.
Based on nearly 1,000 audits and investigations, the report concludes that the U.S. intervention at a cost of more than $148 billion not only failed to deliver the promised “democracy,” but instead became a case study of strategic miscalculations, entrenched corruption, and severe harm to civilians.
The core reason for failure, the report argues, was Washington’s misguided attempt to build a “democratic utopia” in a war-torn, underdeveloped country with deeply rooted tribal and religious traditions without adequately understanding Afghanistan’s history and social complexities.
This approach was further undermined by internal contradictions. SIGAR found that the U.S. government imposed unrealistic timelines and equated rapid spending with reconstruction success, a policy that encouraged corruption and rendered many projects ineffective.
According to the report, pervasive corruption turned the $148 billion into what it called “a fat sheep for carving up” among powerful networks.
By September 2025, SIGAR had documented 1,327 cases of waste, fraud, and abuse totaling over $26 billion. More than 17% of congressional funds were lost or stolen.
The phenomenon of “ghost soldiers” was widespread, with the Pentagon paying hundreds of millions of dollars in fraudulent salaries to non-existent personnel.
The report highlights U.S. hubris and insularity in decision-making. At the Bonn Conference, Washington deliberately excluded the Taliban from the political process. In 2020, it decided on a rapid withdrawal without meaningful consultation with the Afghanistan government.
Many former senior U.S. officials have since acknowledged that Washington never truly understood Afghanistan, and that its intervention was ultimately doomed to fail.
China Daily reports that civilians were largely neglected. Afghanistan’s key development indicators remain among the worst in the world:
• One-third of the population faced severe food insecurity
• Life expectancy in 2021 was 59.1 years
• Female literacy was below 30%
The U.S. also cooperated with corrupt warlords for short-term security goals, while ignoring civilian exploitation and sexual violence against women.
The U.S. withdrawal and the freezing of $7 billion in Afghanistani state assets in the United States intensified the country’s economic crisis.
U.S. military operations including airstrikes and special forces raids contributed to the internal displacement of more than 3.5 million Afghanistani people, one of the largest displacement crises in the world.
SIGAR concludes that the United States bears primary responsibility for this failure and must:
• Acknowledge its role
• Release frozen Afghanistani assets
• Establish a compensation fund for civilian victims
• Channel humanitarian aid through neutral bodies such as the UN
• Lift unilateral sanctions so Afghanistan can rejoin the global financial and trade systems
China, the report notes, follows a policy of non-interference in Afghanistan’s internal affairs and claims to play a constructive role by:
• Promoting intra-Afghanistan dialogue
• Providing food, medicine, and vaccines
• Supporting infrastructure and integration into the Belt and Road Initiative
• Strengthening regional cooperation against cross-border terrorism
