A final report on the 20-year Afghan war and reconstruction has been released by the U.S. Special Inspector General.

According to the report, between 2002 and 2021, the United States allocated $144.7 billion for Afghanistan’s reconstruction and spent $137.3 billion of that amount. Reconstruction spending in Afghanistan exceeded even the Marshall Plan for Europe after World War II.

The report states that corruption within successive Afghan governments proved to be the biggest obstacle to reconstruction. The U.S. spent an additional $763 billion on military operations in Afghanistan. Despite spending $90 billion on Afghan security forces, they remained dependent on foreign troops and collapsed rapidly after the U.S. withdrawal.

The report further reveals that thousands of ghost employees existed within Afghan security institutions, while fuel allocated for Afghan forces was stolen on a large scale. For Afghan forces, 147,000 vehicles and thousands of pieces of military equipment were purchased. They were provided with 427,300 weapons and 162 aircraft, and after the withdrawal, military equipment worth $7.1 billion was left behind in Afghanistan.

It also noted that the World Bank and the Asian Development Bank pledged $12.16 billion for Afghanistan.

Despite spending $7.3 billion on counter-narcotics programs, the efforts remained ineffective. Similarly, $4.7 billion spent on stabilization programs produced disappointing results. During the Afghan war, more than 2,450 U.S. soldiers were killed and 20,700 were wounded.

According to the report, excluding the Afghan government from the Doha talks with the Taliban weakened the state structure. After the withdrawal, $14.2 billion was allocated for relocating Afghan refugees to the United States. Following the fall of Kabul, the U.S. provided $3.83 billion in aid to the Taliban government over four years.

The report adds that $120 million was provided to the Taliban in a single quarter in March 2025. After the U.S. withdrawal, international donors gave $8.1 billion to UN-run projects, and six projects worth $1.5 billion are active under the Afghan Reconstruction Trust Fund. However, the Taliban government continued to collect taxes and levies on aid funds.