Vice, 29 April 2015
Gary Owen, aka El Snarkistani, gives a nice written summary of the latest SIGAR reports, regarding the US (and Afghan) inability to say how many soldiers and policemen there exactly are – belonging to the many “failed attempts at reconstruction.” He asks “how many millions of dollars have been spent on troops that don’t exist just because the US wasn’t able to teach the Afghans how to use a computer.” (The US DoD initially wanted to have computerised staff lists but found out that widespread illiteracy stood in the way – and abandoned the effort. This shows that states don’t necessarily failed on their own, but that often there is outside ‘support’ in this.
Revisions:
This article was last updated on 9 Mar 2020
