SIGAR's latest report

SIGAR is the special inspector general for Afghanistan reconstruction. He has just released his quarterly report to Congress. Elias Groll summarizes some of the findings.

• The United States has spent $7.6 billion on counternarcotics efforts in Afghanistan, but opium cultivation there -- a key Taliban funding source -- has risen for the past three years, and helped push global quantities of the crop to a record level. The U.S. Department of Agriculture spent $34.4 million toward a soybean project in the face of scientific evidence indicating that the crop was "inappropriate for conditions and farming practices in northern Afghanistan, where the program was implemented." The United States Agency for International Development has pledged $75 million toward the ill-fated Kajaki Dam project, but the inspector general questions whether that project is at all economically viable. The United States has spent $626 million to provide weapons and equipment to Afghan forces. That aid includes 465,000 small arms, but, according to the IG, for 43 percent of those arms, information was missing in a database used to track their receipt in Afghanistan.
• So it's perhaps no surprise that the report notes that the Afghan government is far from financial independence. Last year, the Afghan government saw revenues of about $2 billion. Its budget was far larger: $5.4 billion. Donors mostly made up that difference. In January, Afghanistan approved a $7.6 billion budget, with donors chipping in about $4.8 billion.

We spent $104 billion on the Marshall Plan. We've topped that in Afghanistan. Compare the results.