The US Intercept website reported that a congressman who has recently been calling for a re-launch of the US war on Afghanistan owns a defense company that received millions of dollars from contracts to train Afghan forces.

The newspaper cited this in

an article

by writer Lee Fangley as an example of the corruption practiced by American politicians and businessmen during the Afghan governments supported by the United States since the invasion in 2001.

The writer mentioned that Republican Representative of the House of Representatives from Florida Michael Waltz, who owned and operated a defense company with a spotty record of training Afghan security forces, earned $ 25 million from its sale when he won a seat in the House of Representatives for a Florida district in 2018.

Political and financial corruption

Fangley said that Waltz has been calling in recent weeks for President Joe Biden to "reverse course", re-launch military operations in Afghanistan, and crush the Taliban attack using US air power with the support of "special forces", warning of the emergence of what he called "Al Qaeda 3.0" and demanded not to Negotiations with the Taliban "until the situation militarily stabilizes."

Fangley gave many details about Waltz's financial business in Afghanistan since 2010 after he was serving in the military and as an advisor to the administration of former US President George W. Bush, and about his lucrative contracts to train special forces in Afghanistan, including a controversial program to develop artisanal mining operations in some villages. Afghani.

Wasted money and failed projects are perhaps among the most defining aspects of the US-led Western occupation of Afghanistan, which is estimated to have cost more than $2 trillion over 20 years.


Confusing forms of fraud and waste

Various audits have identified countless examples of mind-boggling forms of fraud and waste worth hundreds of billions of dollars, including $70 million embezzled from a trucking company, and $1.6 million spent on a water filtration system that failed just two months later. and $50 billion in mine-resistant vehicles that were eliminated as nonessential.

The writer pointed to the deterioration of the capabilities of the Afghan police forces, which have been trained by private American companies and defense contractors in recent years, and their involvement in crimes and acts of organized crime, corruption and extortion of citizens, pointing out that this police quickly abandoned its positions with the advance of Taliban militants last month, saying that The American failure should not come as a surprise to people.

Fangley commented that Representative Waltz's zeal to "protect" the Afghan people ignores the poor record shown by reports of Afghanistan's nation-building performance in the 20 years since the US invasion.

falsification of development reports

Fangli said the US war on Afghanistan has killed 47,245 civilians and more than 66,000 Afghan police and military personnel, spreading torture, empowering warlords and criminal gangs that have destroyed the lives of most Afghans.

Even the disparate gains for women’s rights in Afghanistan have faded under the US occupation, as reports have shown that women’s participation in Afghan elections has decreased dramatically since 2014, and that many gender equality efforts that America supports have been poorly designed and implemented, With little domestic support, several independent survey reports also found that Americans falsified the enrollment of women in education programs and were misled about other development standards.

However, Fangley reported that Representative Walz was calling for a prolongation of the war, as he told the media in 2017 that the 15-year war - then - was only the beginning, and he expected it to last 100 years.