We know the military industrial complex made huge profits from the wars of the last two decades. The costs were staggering — in the trillions. That alone should make anyone complaining about spending money on US infrastructure or needed human support be told to sit down and shut up. If you want to know what the underlying rationale really was, you need to look no further than those economic incentives.
However, it wasn’t just the military industrial complex. The US spent massive sums on the Afghan Army and government:
The United States insisted on the country’s security architecture but has retrenched from its willingness to pay for it. Since 2014, Washington has provided about 75 percent of the $5 billion to $6 billion per year needed to fund the Afghan National Security Forces while the remainder of the tab was picked up U.S. partner nations and the Afghan government. However, for fiscal year 2021, the U.S. Congress appropriated around $3 billion for Afghanistan’s fighting forces, the lowest amount since fiscal year 2008. This diminution of U.S. support came after Afghan President Ashraf Ghani said his government cannot support its army for even six months without U.S. financial aid.
Although much of the U.S. expenditures pertained to defense, the United States has ostensibly invested in other sectors of Afghan governance. As of June 30, the United States has spent about $144.98 billion in funds for reconstruction and related activities in Afghanistan since fiscal year 2002, including $88.61 billion for security (including $4.6 billion for counternarcotic initiatives); $36.29 billion for governance and development (including $4.37 billion for counternarcotic initiatives); $4.18 billion for humanitarian aid; and $15.91 billion for agency operations.
Although these numbers are staggering, much of U.S. investment did not stay in Afghanistan. Because of heavy reliance on a complex ecosystem of defense contractors, Washington banditry, and aid contractors, between 80 and 90 percent of outlays actually returned to the U.S. economy. Of the 10 to 20 percent of the contracts that remained in the country, the United States rarely cared about the efficacy of the initiative. Although corruption is rife in Afghanistan, the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction repeatedly identifies bewildering corruption by U.S. firms and individuals working in Afghanistan.
In many cases, U.S. firms even defrauded Afghans. In 2010, one military official with the International Security Assistance Force explained to New York Times journalist Carlotta Gall that “without being too dramatic, American contractors are contributing to fueling the insurgency.”
There’s a lot of talk about just how corrupt the Afghan government and military were. I don’t doubt it. But let’s not get too morally superior. There was plenty of corruption going on on the US side too. Indeed, if it weren’t for the massive profits to be made we’d have been long gone many years ago.