MONEY HOLE: A decade of Western aid in Afghanistan – mission unsustainable?

Rebuilding security forces soaked up nearly two-thirds of U.S. funding, leaving tens of billions of dollars for civilian projects, which, according to the U.S. reconstruction watchdog, have not always been spent wisely.

“Evidence strongly suggests that Afghanistan lacks the capacity – financial, technical, managerial, or otherwise – to maintain, support, and execute much of what has been built or established during more than a decade of international assistance,” the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR) said.

Related: U.S. aid to Afghanistan exceeds Marshall Plan in costs, not results.

U.S. spending on the Afghanistan nation-building project over the last dozen years now exceeds $104 billion, surpassing the $103.4 billion current-dollar value of Marshall Plan expenditures, which helped rebuild European nations after World War II. The spending helped a vanquished Germany emerge as the economic engine of Western Europe.

“SIGAR calculates that by the end of 2014, the United States will have committed more funds to reconstruct Afghanistan, in inflation-adjusted terms, than it spent on 16 European countries after World War II under the Marshall Plan,” says the report.