John Sopko:
US Agencies were concealing Truth during Afghanistan Mission
Imtiaz Gul
John F. Sopko , the US Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction, has said it yet again; Why did the US-backed Afghan regime crumble? corruption; ghost soldiers; the dependence of the Afghan military on U.S. airpower, US contractors, and other enablers; and incompetent Afghan leadership, he told Military Reporters & Editors Association Annual Conference Arlington, Virginia on October 29, 2021.
SIGAR has consistently reported on these issues in all the 53 Quarterly Reports to the Congress in the last 12-years. One issue John Sopko highlighted in his speech was the dishonest reporting by US government agencies out of political expedience.
The latest statement is a literal damning indictment of the USAID, Departments of State and Defense – the way they colluded to withhold critical information from the Congress as well as looked away from the massive security and corruption issues in Afghanistan.
John Sopko: But we all know that U.S. agencies have not made honest reporting easy for SIGAR – or for you about America’s longest war. We have a recent example of this bureaucratic inclination to try to restrict public information. As we report in today’s Quarterly report, shortly after the fall of Kabul, the State Department wrote to me and other oversight agencies requesting to “temporarily suspend access” to all “audit, inspection, and financial audit…reports” on our website because the Department was afraid that information included in those reports could put Afghan allies at risk.
Isn’t it paradoxical; a US watchdog has been exposing the massive corruption within the Afghan government, holding them responsible for the fall of Kabul to Taliban but certain US agencies are now protecting the same corrupt elements as their allies and assets, asking SIGAR to remove references to former President Ashraf Ghani and many others? Sopko also questioned Biden administration’s emergency evacuation from Kabul for people various US agencies said were at risk for having worked with them.
And we know how initially even unrelated Afghans latched on to the emergency flights, with no specific threats to them. And this is where Sopko is extremely wary of American agencies’ failure to sift people at risk from those whose lives are or were not endangered.
John Sopko: Let me be clear, I strongly believe that Afghans who are at genuine risk of reprisal due to work they conducted for the United States government, NGOs, news outlets, and other groups should and must be protected. The protection of Afghans at legitimate risk of harm is not an issue to quibble over and something our agency has respected since my appointment 10 years ago.
But despite repeated requests, State was never able to describe any specific threats to individuals that were supposedly contained in our reports, nor did State ever explain how removing our reports now could possibly protect anyone since many were years old and already extensively disseminated worldwide. Nevertheless, with great reservation, I acceded to State’s initial request because it was made at the height of the emergency evacuation from Afghanistan.
Quite interesting; in a country known as the torchbearer of democratic rights and freedom of information, one government institution is asked to censure 100s of references from already published reports? What were the US agencies requesting.
John Sopko: State requested we redact Ashraf Ghani’s name from our reports. While I’m sure the former President may wish to be excised from the annals of history, I don’t believe he faces any threats simply from being referenced by SIGAR.
· State requested we consider redacting a reference to “Redstone Arsenal, Huntsville, Alabama.” This may come as a surprise to the many of you who have visited the base but somehow its name is a threat to some Afghan, or possibly by saying its name publicly it is a threat to Alabama.
· State also asked us to consider redacting the name of a USAID official who publicly testified before Congress in 2017 even though his testimony remains on the House Foreign Affairs Committee website, and the hearing video remains available.
Another related issue is withholding of information on the security front since 2015, how the US Department of Defense and the Ghani regime connived to keep information on the performance of the Afghan security forces from the public.
John Sopko: For example, DOD restricted from public release a range of information going back to 2015 on the performance of the Afghan security forces, purportedly at the request of the Afghan government. This included information such as casualty data, unit strength, training and operational deficiencies, tactical and operational readiness of Afghan military leadership, comprehensive assessments of Afghan security force headquarters leadership; and operational readiness rates down to the corps level. In essence, nearly all the information you needed to know to determine whether the Afghan security forces were a real fighting force or a house of cards waiting to fall. In light of recent events, it is not surprising that the Afghan government, and likely some in DOD, wanted to keep that information under lock and key.
The US Congress has now tasked SIGAR to find answers to some key questions, Sopko said.
· Why the Afghan government collapsed in spite of the $146 billion reconstruction effort;
· Why the Afghan security forces collapsed and how U.S. train, advise, and assist efforts may have contributed to that collapse;
· Continued risks to U.S.-funded reconstruction assistance, including any contracts that may still be active or pending;
· The extent to which the Taliban may have access to previously provided U.S. government funding and equipment left behind;
Good questions indeed but what happens next even if SIGAR provides answers to them? Will the truth that John Sopko, SIGAR, may unearth, also become victim of geo-political considerations? Quite likely because this has been the pattern over the years. One thing is nevertheless clear though; the entire security establishment in the United States is being called out by another state watchdog SIGAR, at least one window on information related to America’s overseas operations as well as on the huge contractor’s industry that has been a major contributory factor to the pilferage and abuse of 100s of billions of dollars by Afghan elites and US contractors alike.
