{"id":64755,"date":"2020-01-29T20:46:58","date_gmt":"2020-01-29T20:46:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/one.sightlinemg.com\/navytimes\/uncategorized\/2020\/01\/29\/bean-counters-not-bullets-are-key-to-afghanistans-future\/"},"modified":"2026-08-08T12:47:56","modified_gmt":"2026-08-08T12:47:56","slug":"bean-counters-not-bullets-are-key-to-afghanistans-future","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/one.sightlinemg.com\/navytimes\/news\/your-navy\/2020\/01\/29\/bean-counters-not-bullets-are-key-to-afghanistans-future\/","title":{"rendered":"Bean counters, not bullets, are key to Afghanistan\u2019s future"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The \u201cfirst line of defense\u201d in what follows any potential peace deal in <a href=\"https:\/\/www.armytimes.com\/news\/your-army\/2018\/07\/13\/10-years-after-wanat-army-leaders-should-look-to-this-battle-to-prepare-for-brutal-fights-in-the-future-2\/\" target=_blank>Afghanistan<\/a> isn\u2019t likely to be grunts on patrol but soldiers who monitor the billions of dollars spent on projects aimed at holding the war-torn country together.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">But a near blackout of information on the effectiveness of U.S. <a href=\"https:\/\/www.marinecorpstimes.com\/news\/your-military\/2018\/11\/19\/report-enemy-attacks-decrease-in-afghanistan-but-airstrikes-deaths-rise-as-urban-centers-remain-vulnerable\/\" target=_blank>programs in Afghanistan<\/a> is threatening to increase waste, fraud, abuse and malfeasance on projects intended to help the country when U.S. troops ultimately leave, John Sokpo, special inspector general for <a href=\"https:\/\/www.armytimes.com\/news\/your-army\/2019\/05\/08\/the-next-army-sfab-deployments-might-look-a-whole-lot-different-from-recent-ones\/\" target=_blank>Afghanistan<\/a> reconstruction, told members of the House Oversight and Reform Committee on Tuesday.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cCan the Afghan military fight? Well, you don\u2019t know because they took away all of the metrics for success,\u201d Sopko said. \u201cAnd we don\u2019t know.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\t<aside class=\"smg-interstitial-link wp-block-smg-interstitial-link\">\n\t\t<a href=\"https:\/\/one.sightlinemg.com\/militarytimes\/news\/your-military\/2019\/07\/10\/report-military-leaders-must-speak-up-to-prevent-the-another-afghanistan\/\" class=\"smg-interstitial-link__inner\">\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<div class=\"smg-interstitial-link__media\">\n\t\t\t\t\t<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"300\" height=\"200\" src=\"https:\/\/one.sightlinemg.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/82nd-Airborne-Division-in-Afghanistan.jpg.jpg?w=300\" class=\"smg-interstitial-link__image wp-post-image\" alt=\"\" \/>\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t<div class=\"smg-interstitial-link__content\">\n\t\t\t\t<span class=\"smg-interstitial-link__kicker\">Related<\/span>\n\t\t\t\t<h3 class=\"smg-interstitial-link__title\">Report: Military leaders must speak up to prevent  another Afghanistan<\/h3>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<p class=\"smg-interstitial-link__excerpt\">Author recommends changes in military doctrine, planning and culture when working with civilian counterparts.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/a>\n\t<\/aside>\n\t\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Sopko cautioned that without critical planning and oversight, any progress post-peace deal would be unlikely. As the number of troops are reduced, so is the number of people who oversee programs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cOtherwise you might as well pile up all the dollars and euros in Massoud Circle in downtown Kabul and burn them for all the good they\u2019ll do,\u201d Sopko said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Official estimates show that since 2002 the United States has spent $780 billion on combat operations and $137 billion on reconstruction efforts. More than 2,400 U.S. troops have died in the conflict, and at least 20,000 have been wounded.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Current troop levels hover at an estimated 13,000, down from about 100,000 at the height of the 18-year war. But as those troops and assets decrease, the programs put in place to rebuild Afghanistan are in jeopardy without sufficient oversight.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cThe first line of defense is that soldier who\u2019s monitoring the contract or monitoring the Afghan government,\u201d Sopko said. \u201cIf further troop reductions happen, who\u2019s going to come back?\u201cAre they gun toters or are they monitoring?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">He continued, \u201cIf [monitors] come back in the first tranche, who\u2019s going to protect your money?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Bombing missions reached a near-decade high last year. A recent U.S. Air Forces Central Command report showed that U.S. aircraft dropped 7,423 munitions in the country in 2019. Comparatively, when U.S. troops were at their peak in 2010 and 2011, the U.S. dropped 5,100 and 5,411 bombs respectively.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">While bombing may be up, it appears troop numbers and assets supporting those troops continue to decline.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">A December 2019 Pentagon report titled \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/media.defense.gov\/2020\/Jan\/23\/2002238296\/-1\/-1\/1\/1225-REPORT-DECEMBER-2019.PDF\" target=_blank>Enhancing Security and Stability of Afghanistan<\/a>\u201d showed plans to cut UH-60 Black Hawk helicopters for Afghan forces from 159 to 53 and the AC-208 attack and reconnaissance aircraft from 32 to 10.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Despite repeated invitations, neither the Department of Defense nor the State Department sent representatives to update Congress on Trump\u2019s Afghanistan plan, which drew bipartisan ire from committee members.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cIf you didn\u2019t exist, we would have nobody at this hearing today to give us any answers,\u201d Rep. Thomas Massie, R-Kentucky told Sopko.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">In response, the inspector general pushed Congress to get the answers they need to do their oversight jobs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cYou\u2019ve got to force the administration to be honest,\u201d Sopko said. \u201cThe administration has to come in and tell you, why are you spending this money, what do you expect to accomplish at the end?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">But it\u2019s become increasingly difficult for both Congress and the U.S. public to know what is happening with the billions spent in Afghanistan as information is increasingly limited by Trump officials.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The Washington Post\u2019s \u201cAfghanistan Papers\u201d project, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/graphics\/2019\/investigations\/afghanistan-papers\/afghanistan-war-confidential-documents\/\" target=_blank>released late last year<\/a>, highlighted many instances in which officials misled Congress and the public with rosy pictures of progress in the 18-year war.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Sopko stopped short of pointing to specific people in current or previous administrations outright lying, instead noting that exaggerated claims of progress had become part of the culture of dealing with challenges in Afghanistan years ago.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cThat\u2019s the real dishonesty, we have been dishonest to ourselves,\u201d Sopko said. \u201cA number of people have come here and tried to tell the good story. We also have this hubris that we can turn Afghanistan into a little America or another Norway. We can\u2019t.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Sopko ticked off a list of waste that\u2019s been uncovered, from $9 billion spent on counter-narcotics that had no real effect on the drug trade, $500 million spent on airplanes that can\u2019t fly and millions more spent on buildings that melted in the Afghan sun.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cEvery commander I\u2019ve met, I\u2019ve met six of them. Every one of them has said, \u2018the summer fighting season, we won,\u201d Sopko said. \u201cIf we won, what does defeat look like?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">House members probed Sopko for reasons why there have been changes in classifying previously public measures of progress in Afghanistan under President Donald Trump\u2019s administration and the shift away from Taliban versus Afghan government controlled territories.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cI can\u2019t give you an answer because there was never a real good explanation to us why district and population control was no longer relevant,\u201d Sopko said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">He called the changes indicative of a larger problem, wherein every metric that Congress would find useful for evaluating successes or failures in Afghanistan is now \u201ceither classified or not being monitored anymore.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Some vital Afghanistan progress measures are either classified or no longer being tracked.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":74318,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_yoast_wpseo_meta-robots-noindex":"","_yoast_wpseo_meta-robots-nofollow":"","_yoast_wpseo_canonical":"","_acf":"","_yoast_wpseo_primary_category":65,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","_smg_distribution_targets":[]},"categories":[101,12,26,65],"tags":[],"coauthors":[3405],"class_list":["post-64755","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-daily-news-roundup","category-news","category-newsletters","category-your-navy"],"acf":{"subheadline":"","legacy_arc_id":"4V25S7NKT5F5NN4ZFX4G6A2TCA","arc_canonical_url":"\/news\/your-military\/2020\/01\/29\/bean-counters-not-bullets-are-key-to-afghanistans-future\/","remove_feature_photo":false,"is_sponsored":false,"subtype":"","redirect_url":"","disable_inline_ads":false,"native_logo_pretext":"Presented 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