24 May 2018
A team I had the privilege of leading at SIGAR has finished a comprehensive lessons learned report on the U.S. effort to stabilize contested Afghan districts from 2002-2017.
Our analysis reveals the U.S. government greatly overestimated its ability to build and reform government institutions in Afghanistan as part of its stabilization strategy. We found the stabilization strategy and the programs used to achieve it were not properly tailored to the Afghan context, and successes in stabilizing Afghan districts rarely lasted longer than the physical presence of coalition troops and civilians. As a result, by the time all prioritized districts had transitioned from coalition to Afghan control in 2014, the services and protection provided by Afghan forces and civil servants often could not compete with a resurgent Taliban as it filled the void in newly vacated territory.
The full report is available here: https://www.sigar.mil/pdf/lessonslearned/SIGAR-18-48-LL.pdf
An interactive summary of the report is available here: https://www.sigar.mil/interactive-reports/stabilization/index.html
Just Wars 
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