The United States could and should have fostered a more stable and prosperous Afghanistan by investing in health, schools, safe water, nutrition, and other social services, says prominent US economist Jeffrey Sachs.
Afghanistan has only 172 hospitals and around a third of the 37 million population has no access to a functional health centre within two hours of their home, according to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA).
This is despite the fact the US invested roughly US$946 billion in the country between 2001 and 2021, according to a report by the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction.
“Of that $946 billion, fully $816 billion, or 86 per cent, went to military outlays for US troops. And the Afghan people saw little of the remaining $130 billion, with $83 billion going to the Afghan Security Forces. Another $10 billion or so was spent on drug interdiction operations, while $15 billion was for US agencies operating in Afghanistan,” Sachs wrote in the online magazine Project Syndicate.
“That left a meagre $21 billion in ‘economic support’ funding. In short, less than 2 per cent of the US spending on Afghanistan reached the Afghan people in the form of basic infrastructure or poverty-reducing services.” .