Americas...:$1tn Cost of Longest US War in Afghanistan

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The Afghanistan war, the longest overseas conflict in American history, has cost the US taxpayer nearly $1tn and will require spending several hundred billion dollars more after it officially ends this month, according to Financial Times calculations and independent researchers.

Around 80 per cent of that spending on the Afghanistan conflict has taken place during the presidency of Barack Obama, who sharply increased the US military presence in the country after taking office in 2009.

The enormous bill for the 13-year conflict, which has never been detailed by the government, will add to the pervasive skepticism about the war in the US, where opinion polls show a majority of Americans believe it was a bad idea.

With the Iraq war having already cost the US $1.7tn, according to one study, the bill from the Afghanistan conflict is an important factor in the broader reluctance among the American public and the Obama administration to intervene militarily in other parts of the world - including sending troops back to Iraq.

John Sopko, the government's special inspector-general for Afghanistan, whose organisation monitors the more than $100bn that has been spent on reconstruction projects in the country, said that "billions of dollars" of those funds had been wasted or stolen on projects that often made little sense for the conditions in Afghanistan.

"We simply cannot lose this amount of money again," he said. "The American people will not put up with it."
Adjusted for inflation, Sopko said the amount the US had spent on reconstruction in Afghanistan was more than the cost of the Marshall Plan to rebuild western Europe.

Under current plans, about 10,000 US troops will remain in the country until 2016.

Since 2001, the government has appropriated $765bn for the war in Afghanistan, the vast bulk for the military department but also including some spending at the state department.

The money to finance both the Iraq and Afghan wars was borrowed and, according to Ryan Edwards at City University of New York, the US has already paid interest of $260bn on that war debt. Under FT calculations based on funds appropriated, $125bn of those interest costs have been allocated to the Afghan conflict.

The future bill from the Afghan war is likely to run into hundreds of billions of dollars more. The Pentagon has indicated it wants funding of $120bn for 2016-19 for operations in Afghanistan, although the eventual cost will depend on the future mission that the White House decides on.

Source: News Agencies, Edited by website team