Congress appropriated about $144.7 billion for Afghanistan reconstruction from 2002 to 2021, but the U.S. failed to transform the country into a democracy, in part because of corrupt allies and the lack of a clear plan, according to the final report from the special inspector general for Afghanistan reconstruction, or SIGAR.

The report, released earlier this week, is a collection of the inspector general's previous work, which taken together, "highlights serious systemic issues with reconstruction and paints a picture of a two-decade long effort fraught with waste," acting inspector general Gene Aloise wrote at the beginning of the report.

"We were seeing what was happening all along. This was not what winning looked like," Aloise told reporters at a session of the Defense Writers Grou

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