https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/12/09/world/middleeast/afghanistan-war-cost.htmlAmerican 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, was wasted on programs that 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.