LAHORE: Around 90 percent of American forces have reportedly left Afghanistan already, but not before the world super power had to incur huge financial and human losses in this rugged mountainous country since the war against the Taliban had begun in October 2001, research shows.
Archival knowledge tells us that Washington DC has spent almost $1,000 billion in Afghanistan till date, besides having lost 2,300 of its soldiers including a major general (Harold Greene) in 2014. Moreover, close to 20,660 American soldiers have been injured or rendered incapacitated in counter-insurgency operations during this period under review.
According to a recent BBC News report, Washington DC has spent $822 billion between 2001 and 2019 in Afghanistan, though the 257-year-old prestigious Brown University, based in Rhode Island, has put this figure at $978 billion. The British media house states: “According to the US Department of Defense, the total military expenditure in Afghanistan (from October 2001 until September 2019) had reached $778 billion. In addition, the US State Department along with the US Agency for International Development (USAID) and other government agencies spent $44 billion on reconstruction projects. That brings the total cost based on official data to $822billion between 2001 and 2019, but it doesn't include any spending in Pakistan, which the US uses as a base for Afghan-related operations.”
The BBC News further writes: “According to a Brown University study in 2019, which has looked at war spending in both Afghanistan and Pakistan, the US had spent $978 billion (their estimate also includes money allocated for fiscal year 2020). The study notes that it is difficult to assess the overall cost because accounting methods vary between government departments, and they also change over time, leading to different overall estimates."
The Brown University's research in 2019 had estimated the loss of life amongst the Afghan military and police to be over 64,000 since 2001. According to the New York Times, the Telegraph, the ABC News, the Washington Post, the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan, the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction and the Congressional Research Service, the United States has also spent about $143.27 billion on reconstruction activities in Afghanistan since 2001. While more than half of this money ($88.32billion) was spent on building up Afghan security forces, including the Afghan national army and police force, nearly $36 billion were allocated for governance and development.
The special inspector general for Afghanistan reconstruction, in one of his reports presented to the US Congress in October 2020, had estimated that about $19 billion had been lost to waste, fraud and abuse between May 2009 and December 31, 2019.
Meanwhile, the eminent German website “Statista” reveals: “As of February 2, 2021, the United States had lost a total 7,036 soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan, with 755 coming from the State of California alone.” Citing a Pentagon official as its source, the BBC News has recently held: “Between 2010 and 2012, when the US for a time had more than 100,000 soldiers in the country, the cost of the war grew to almost $100bn a year, according to figures. By 2018, the annual expenditure was around $45billion."
As far as loss of life among security forces and the general public is concerned, President Ashraf Ghani had said in 2019 that more than 45,000 members of the Afghan security forces had been killed between 2014 and 2019.
