Afghanistan Reconstruction: Lies, Damn Lies, and Statistics

Afghanistan Reconstruction: Lies, Damn Lies, and Statistics | The Diplomat: 

U.S. reconstruction efforts in Afghanistan have been broad, touching “nearly every aspect of Afghan life,” from digging wells to standing up the Afghan army; building schools, clinics, and roads to developing alternative crops in order to shift farmers away from cultivating poppy. In many of these areas, Sopko says, “large amounts of taxpayer dollars have been lost to waste, fraud, and abuse.”

Poppy cultivation is at an all-time high, thousands of weapons have gone missing, no one really knows how many Afghan soldiers there are, schools crumble due to shoddy construction, there are clinics without doctors or medicine, and countless dollars have gone missing.