In the annals of warfare and strategy, it would be difficult to find a tale of more woe than America’s Second Afghan War. What to call the US presence in Afghanistan during the first two decades of the twenty-first century: occupation, invasion, intervention, nation-building, counter-terrorism war? All of the above? Who was the enemy, if the ostensible nemesis for twenty years was handed over billions of dollars-worth of US weapons upon departure? Amidst the lies and the fog of war spanning a score of years, only one minuscule part of the US Government remained steadfast on the side of facts: Special Inspector General for Afghan Reconstruction (SIGAR). Its latest quarterly report was published at the end of January 2025. It is eye-opening.

Trunks full of cash dollars, à la the First Afghan War (1979-89), are ostensibly still being delivered

“Since U.S. forces withdrew from Afghanistan in August 2021, the United
States has been the largest donor to the Afghan people,” begins the report. “The United States has appropriated or otherwise made available more than $21.36 billion in assistance to Afghanistan and to Afghan refugees.” Most of this huge number was spent inside the United States to resettle Afghans and to tie expensive loose ends remaining from private contractors.

What boggles the mind is that $2.63 billion in humanitarian assistance and $558 million in development assistance has been provided by the United States to the Taliban regime since their withdrawal on 15 August 2021. That is $67 million per month for four years running. Trunks full of cash dollars, à la the First Afghan War (1979-89), are ostensibly still being delivered.

The $21.36 billion for Afghanistan includes $3.50 billion in Afghan central
bank assets previously frozen in the United States that the US Government transferred to a Swiss-based ‘Fund for the Afghan People’. “Although no disbursements to benefit the Afghan people have yet been made,” the report informs us, “the Fund is intended to protect macro financial stability on behalf of the Afghan people that could, in the long-term, include recapitalising Afghanistan’s central bank; should the conditions materialise, keep Afghanistan current on debt payments to international financial institutions to preserve its eligibility for development assistance, and pay for critically needed imported goods.” This Fund’s purposes may be mysterious, but its balance is not: with interest accrued, it stood at $3.94 billion as of 31 December 2024.

The Afghan Taliban are on the U.S. Specially Designated Global Terrorist list and thus subject to sanctions

The report insists that the Afghan Taliban are on the U.S. Specially Designated Global Terrorist list and thus subject to sanctions, limiting their access to foreign funds. In the very next sentence, however, we are informed that since September 2021 US Government has authorized a series of licenses allowing for the provision of humanitarian aid to the people of Afghanistan “while maintaining sanctions against the Taliban, the Haqqani Network, and other terror entities”.

The facade is that the US implements its funding through NGOs, international organizations, or other third parties, minimizing benefit to the Taliban. The truth behind the facade: the United States has been propping up the Afghan Taliban government under myriad rubrics. The purpose of this succor and its future directions should be subject to intense analysis in Islamabad and Rawalpindi.

“How had the war degenerated into a stalemate with no realistic prospect for an enduring victory?”

SIGAR’s latest report to the US Congress abounds with statistics in detail, as do all its previous installments. What the SIGAR reports do not provide are answers to questions such as “How had the war degenerated into a stalemate with no realistic prospect for an enduring victory?” What happened to the much-touted and mega-hyped COIN (counterinsurgency)? Why did the longest war in US history end in ignominy for the hyperpower?

A partial answer was, however, provided intriguingly by SIGAR in a different context. As journalist Craig Whitlock recounts in ‘The Afghanistan Papers’, published by the Washington Post in 2021, SIGAR staffers interviewed 2014-18 many officials who served during the Bush and Obama years to try to document “Lessons Learned”. These interviews are a profoundly futile version of what happened in Vietnam six decades ago.

“U.S. officials confessed that the war plans had fatal flaws and that Washington had wasted billions of dollars trying to remake Afghanistan into a modern nation,” writes Whitlock. “U.S. government has made botched attempts to curtail runaway corruption, build a competent Afghan army and police force, and put a dent in Afghanistan’s thriving opium trade. Astonishingly, commanding generals admitted that they had tried to fight the war without a functional strategy.”

The documents collectively will form the objective basis on which future histories of the Second Afghan War will be written

Whitlock supplemented the interviews with many additional sources, released documents, and additional interviews. The conclusion is stark: “running throughout were torrents of criticism that refuted the official narrative of the war, from its earliest days through the start of the Trump administration. U.S. officials had repeatedly lied to the public about what was happening in Afghanistan, just as they had in Vietnam.”

SIGAR’s reports and interviews did not alter the course of the war. But the documents collectively will form the objective basis on which future histories of the Second Afghan War will be written. Until that is written, one is served better by Carter Malkasian’s ‘War Come to Garmser’, Wesley Morgan’s ‘A Hard Place’, Rajiv Chandrasekaran’s ‘Little America’, Jonathan Steele’s ‘The Ghosts of Afghanistan, and most recently, Sune Rasmussen’s ‘Twenty Years’.

Brown University’s Watson Institute has made first approximations of the cost of America’s Afghan catastrophe. In Afghanistan and Pakistan, 243,000 people died as a direct result of this war. These figures do not include deaths caused by disease, loss of access to food, water, infrastructure, and/or other indirect consequences of the war. Unbundling the death figures corrects the perspective: of the 176,000 dead in Afghanistan, 2324 were US military, 6 were American civilians, and 4007 were US contractors. The rest were Afghans. In the 67,000 deaths in Pakistan, there were zero US military and civilian deaths, but 90 US contractors. The rest of the nearly 67,000 were all Pakistanis.

In Pakistan, the staging-post of the America’s two Afghan wars, we are bereft of books, articles, reports, and documents on our role in the two wars. It is scarce comfort that in the US, no lessons have been learned despite the spate of publications on lessons learned. The half-century that separates the Pentagon Papers and the Afghanistan papers cures us of any illusion that the truth, complete or partial, will contribute to make the decision-makers in the US any wiser. Onward to Greenland and Ghazah!

Disclaimer: The opinions expressed in this article are solely those of the author. They do not represent the views, beliefs, or policies of the Stratheia.