Courtney Buble
For all the professed shock in Washington about the Taliban’s rapid takeover of Afghanistan, one senior government official was notably unsurprised. John Sopko, who has served as the special inspector general for Afghanistan Reconstruction since July 2012, told NPR on Monday, “It’s not surprising … I mean, we’ve been warning—my little agency—for the last almost 10 years about issues with the [Afghan National Security Forces’] capabilities and sustainment,” he said. “All the signs have been there. I mean, we’ve been shining a light on it in multiple reports going back to when I started in 2012 about changing metrics, about ghosts, ghost soldiers who didn’t exist, about poor logistics, about the fact that the Afghans couldn’t sustain what we were giving them.”
‘All the Signs Have Been There’ Predicting Afghan Security Force Collapse, IG Says – Defense One
