WASHINGTON (Sputnik) — Sopko’s comment came after he delivered an address at an event in Washington, DC entitled “Rebuilding Afghanistan: Transparency and Accountability in America's Longest War” in which he outlined the biggest challenges the United States faces in ensuring reconstruction funding does not go to waste.
“Everything is at risk, unless we do really good oversight,” Sopko told Sputnik on Tuesday when asked which of the billions of dollars worth of Afghan reconstruction projects were the most at risk of being abused.
SIGAR has exposed rampant waste, abuse and corruption in Afghanistan, Sopko explained during his address, including building bridges the Afghan government never asked for, $700 million invested in "ghost" schools and $200 million in contract fraud.
On July 9, SIGAR reported that US government agencies have sunk $1 billion into an Afghan rule of law program without devising a strategy to guide it.
The United States has appropriated more than $107 billion for relief and reconstruction in Afghanistan between 2002 and 2014.
The latest federal budget analysis by the National Priorities Project (NPP) has estimated that the 2001-2014 campaign in Afghanistan costs US taxpayers $4 million every hour.
US-led NATO combat forces withdrew from Afghanistan in December 2014 after a 14-year occupation. Combat operations in the country gave way to a US training and support mission for the Afghan National Security Forces (ANSF), dubbed Resolute Support, on January 2, 2015.
