The Taliban* was hardly behind corrupt deals related to US military aid to Afghanistan, Moscow-based political analyst Alexander Knyazev told Sputnik.
US Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR) John Sopko has warned of “unanticipated consequences” from possible corruption pertaining to America’s hefty spending on Ukraine.
The Taliban* was hardly behind corrupt deals related to US military aid to Afghanistan, Moscow-based political analyst Alexander Knyazev told Sputnik.
US Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR) John Sopko has warned of “unanticipated consequences” from possible corruption pertaining to America’s hefty spending on Ukraine.
Speaking hours after Senate Democrats blocked an effort to install greater oversight over the billions of dollars of US military aid to Ukraine, Sopko recalled that Washington has sent more money to Kiev in one year than it spent in Afghanistan in 12 years.
SIGAR said that he was “not opposed to spending that” and he just wanted “to make sure it’s done correctly and there’s oversight.” Sopko especially warned about the risk of fueling graft, stressing that in Afghanistan, “corruption was the existential threat.” According to him, “it wasn’t the Taliban. It was corruption that did us in.”
As far as corruption in Afghanistan is concerned, one can already refer to this evil as a thing of the past, Russian political scientist Alexander Knyazev said.
“As for Afghanistan, I understand that we should now mention this kind of corruption in the past tense. First and foremost, there are few facts about the spread of Western weapons outside Afghanistan. Secondly, even external observers disloyal to the Taliban movement underscore a decrease in the level of corruption in Afghanistan after the Taliban came to power there,” Knyazev pointed out.
He added that over the past twenty years, “all Western aid to Afghanistan has been plundered, which importantly was not the work of Afghans.” One way or another, the analyst went on to say, “this period for Afghanistan is over.”
He also said that “the lion’s share of American aid to Afghanistan did not reach the country at all, [because] it was immediately plundered in Washington.”
“Probably, if someone ever calculates the US’ aid to Ukraine that was stealthily stolen, the sum will likely exceed what was pinched from America’s Afghan aid that came between 2001 and 2021,” Knyazev argued.
With the US spending a whopping $2.26 trillion on Afghanistan-related issues, such as the national army and security, within the above-mentioned period, this huge sum finally didn’t help America prevent the Taliban from seizing power in the South Asian country in August 2021.
This resulted in the collapse of the Washington-backed Afghan civilian government and mass evacuations, something that came amid the chaotic withdrawal of the US-led coalition troops from Afghanistan, which wrapped on August 30, 2021.
*The Taliban is an organization under UN sanctions for terrorist activities.