U.S. aid policies cripple success of Afghanistan mission: The Guardian

LONDON, July 12 (Xinhua) -- The "huge, badly coordinated and politically driven" aid program of the United States in Afghanistan "engendered the corruption that undermined its entire mission and turned Afghans away from the Western coalition," The Guardian reported Tuesday.

"We did not really understand Afghanistan or how it worked as a country," the media outlet quoted John Sopko as saying. Sopko, the special inspector general for Afghanistan reconstruction, made the remarks on Monday at a conference at the London-based defense and security thinktank the Royal United Services Institute.

"We sent so much money so quickly into so poor a country with so little oversight, we were actually giving more money than the gross domestic product of Afghanistan for so many years," Sopko said.

"Unrealistic timelines" set by Washington and Brussels had "led to a desire to show success," The Guardian quoted him as saying.

"We do not want to be honest and as a result we learned how to do the wrong thing perfectly by checking boxes. We focused on inputs but never looked at the outcomes," he added.