An assessment of spending on the war in Afghanistan finds there is little to show for it.
An assessment of spending on the war in Afghanistan finds there is little to show for it.
The New York Times
Middle East|What Did the U.S. Get for $2 Trillion in Afghanistan?
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What Did the U.S. Get for $2 Trillion in Afghanistan?
BySARAH ALMUKHTARandROD NORDLANDDEC. 9, 2019

The Taliban are gaining strength.
Opium production has quadrupled.
Osama bin Laden is dead.
Most Afghans live in poverty.
All told, the cost of nearly 18 years of war in Afghanistan will amount to more than $2 trillion. Was the money well spent?
There is little to show for it. The Taliban control much of the country. Afghanistan remains one of the world’s largest sources of refugees and migrants. More than2,400 American soldiers and more than38,000Afghan civilianshave died.
Still, life has improved, particularly in the country’s cities, where opportunities for education have grown. Many more girls are now in school. And democratic institutions have been built — although they are shaky at best.
Drawing on estimates from Brown University’s Costs of War Project, we assessed how much the United States spent on different aspects of the war and whether that spending achieved its aims.
$1.5 trillion waging war
The Taliban control or contest much of the country.
Mazar-i-Sharif
Kunduz
Baghlan
Kabul
Afghanistan
Herat
Ghazni
Taliban Presence by
District, Dec. 2019
Lashkar Gah
Kandahar
Control
Contested
100 Miles
Mazar-i-Sharif
Kunduz
Baghlan
Kabul
Afghanistan
Herat
Ghazni
Taliban Presence by
District, Dec. 2019
Lashkar Gah
Kandahar
Control
Contested
100 Miles
Kunduz
Kabul
Afghanistan
Ghazni
Taliban
Presence
by District,
Dec. 2019
Kandahar
Control
Contested
200 Miles
When President George W. Bush announced the first military action in Afghanistan in the wake of terrorist attacks by Al Qaeda in 2001, he said the goal was to disrupt terrorist operations and attack the Taliban.
Eighteen years later, the Taliban are steadily getting stronger. They kill Afghan security force members — sometimeshundreds inaweek— and defeat government forces in almost every major engagement, except when significant American air support is used against them.
Al Qaeda’s senior leadership moved to Pakistan, but the group hasmaintained a presencein Afghanistan and expanded to branches in Yemen, northern Africa, Somalia and Syria.
The $1.5 trillion in war spending remains opaque, but the Defense Departmentdeclassified breakdownsof some of the three most recent years of spending.
Most of the money detailed in those breakdowns — about 60 percent each year — went to things like training, fuel, armored vehicles and facilities. Transportation, such as air and sea lifts, took up about 8 percent, or $3 billion to $4 billion a year.
$10 billion on counternarcotics
Afghanistan supplies 80 percent of the world’s heroin.
In a report last year, the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction described counternarcotics efforts as a “failure.” Despite billions of dollars to fight opium poppy cultivation, Afghanistan is the source of80 percentof global illicit opium production.
Hectares of Opium Cultivated in Afghanistan
2017: 328,000
300
200
100
2002: 84,000
2005
2010
2015
Hectares of Opium Cultivated in Afghanistan
2017:
328,000
300
200
100
2002:
84,000
2005
2010
2015
Hectares of Opium
Cultivated in Afghanistan
2017:
328,000
300
200
100
2002:
84,000
2005
2010
2015
Before the war, Afghanistan had almost completely eradicated opium, according to United Nations data from 1996 to 2001, when the Taliban were in power.
Today, opium cultivation is a major source of income and jobs, as well as revenue for the Taliban. Other than war expenditures, it is Afghanistan’s biggest economic activity.
$87 billion to train Afghan military and police forces
Afghan forces can’t support themselves.
One of the major goals of the American effort has been to train thousands of Afghan troops. Most of American spending on reconstruction has gone to a fund that supports the Afghan Army and police forces through equipment, training and funding.
But nobody in Afghanistan — not the American military, and not President Ashraf Ghani’s top advisers — thinks Afghan military forces could support themselves.
Strength of the Afghan Security Forces
Current target: 352,000
300
thousand
troops
2018: 308,700
250
2010
2012
2014
2016
Strength of the Afghan Security Forces
Current target:
352,000
300
thousand
troops
2018:
308,700
250
2010
2012
2014
2016
Strength of the Afghan
Security Forces
Current target:
352,000
300
thousand
troops
2018:
308,700
250
’10
’12
’14
’16
The Afghan Army in particular suffers from increasing casualty rates and desertion, which means they have to train new recruits totaling at least a third of their entire force every year.
President Barack Obama had planned to hand over total responsibility for security to the Afghans by the end of 2014 and to draw down all American forces by 2016. That plan faltered when the Taliban took quick advantage and gained ground.
The American military had to persuade first President Obama, and then President Trump, to ramp up forces. Some 14,000 U.S. troops remained in the country as of this month.
$24 billion on economic development
Most Afghans still live in poverty.
War-related spending has roughly doubled the size of Afghanistan’s economy since 2007. But it has not translated into a healthy economy.
A quarter or more of Afghans are unemployed, and the economic gains have trailed off since 2015, when the international military presence began to draw down.
Overseas investors still balk at Afghanistan’s corruption — among the worst in the world, according toTransparency International, an anticorruption group — and even Afghan companies look for cheaper labor from India and Pakistan.
Hopes of self-sufficiency in the mineral sector, which thePentagon boastedcould be worth $1 trillion, have been dashed. A few companies from China and elsewhere began investing in mining, but poor security and infrastructure have prevented any significant payout.
$30 billion on other reconstruction programs
Much of that money was lost to corruption and failed projects.
American taxpayers have supported reconstruction efforts that include peacekeeping, refugee assistance and aid for chronic flooding, avalanches and earthquakes.
Much of that money, the inspector general found, waswasted on programsthat were poorly conceived or riddled with corruption.
American dollars went to build hospitals that treated no patients, to schools that taught no students (and sometimes never existed at all) and to military bases the Afghans found useless and later shuttered.
The inspector general documented $15.5 billion in waste, fraud and abuse in reconstruction efforts from 2008 through 2017.
Thanks to American spending, Afghanistan has seen improvements in health and education — but they are scant compared with international norms.
Afghan maternal mortality remains among the highest in the world, while life expectancy is among the lowest. Most girls still receive little or no schooling, and education for boys is generally poor.
$500 billion on interest
The war has been funded with borrowed money.
To finance war spending, the United States borrowed heavily and will pay more than $600 billion in interest on those loans through 2023. The rest of the debt will take years to repay.
In addition to the more than $2 trillion the American government has already spent on the war, debt and medical costs will continue long into the future.
$1.4 trillion on veterans that have fought in post-9/11 wars by 2059
Medical and disability costs will continue for decades.
More than $350 billion has already gone to medical and disability care for veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan combined. Experts say that more than half of that spending belongs to the Afghanistan effort.
The final total is unknown, but experts project anothertrillion dollarsin costs over the next 40 years as wounded and disabled veterans age and need more services.
Sources: Neta C. Crawford, professor of political science at Boston University; Costs of War Project at Brown University; Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction; Department of Defense; The Long War Journal; United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime; Brookings Institution. | Note: War costs include money specifically earmarked for war spending in addition to increases to the overall Department of Defense base budget. Estimates are for authorized budget amounts in 2019 dollars.
An earlier version of this article referred incorrectly to the maternal mortality rate in Afghanistan. It is among the highest in the world, not the lowest.

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