Washington Post, 18 June 2016
A primer for the upcoming NATO summit which also has Afghanistan and the future NATO involvement there on its agenda, with some interesting facts and statements. The United States and its allies, it reports, “will try to raise $15 billion to fund Afghan security forces through 2020. About $10.5 billion of that is expected to come from the United States. (…)
But even though billions of dollars have been wasted or stolen here over the past 15 years, NATO leaders will probably not link the money to new benchmarks or anti-corruption standards for the Afghan military, said Maj. Gen. Gordon “Skip” Davis Jr., commander of Combined Security Transition Command-Afghanistan, which oversees coalition support for Afghan security forces.
‘There was discussion last year about having some specific benchmarks before the Warsaw summit, but I think the allies felt it was impractical,” said Davis, adding that it would have taken months to agree on what new strings should be placed on the money. “There just wasn’t enough time.’ (…)”
Neta Crawford, a professor of political science at Boston University and co-director of the Cost of War Project, is quoted as saying that, since 2001, the Pentagon and the U.S. State Department have spent a total of $783 billion on Afghanistan, factoring in the costs of deploying troops and diplomats. That figure balloons to $1.8 trillion if future interest on the national debt, veterans’ care and other long-term spending is considered, she estimates.
Revisions:
This article was last updated on 9 Mar 2020
