Leaving Afghanistan

Brown University’s Costs of War study says United States federal expenditure on the war in Afghanistan, including past costs and future costs, interest and veterans care is roughly $2.261 trillion. This cost does not include international expenditure, with many partner countries contributing multi-billion dollar investments. That includes Canada, Britain, France, Italy, Denmark, Poland, Australia, Germany and Spain.

The total expenditure means the international community has spent more than $300 million a day on the war since 2001, or $50,000 for each Afghan citizen currently living in the country. This is more than 100 times the average Afghan’s yearly income.

For the last 10 years, Afghanistan has been ranked as one of the three least peaceful nations, according to the Global Peace Index. It has been the least peaceful for the last four years.

A United Nations report found that more women and children were killed and wounded in the first six months of 2021 than in any first six months of any year since the U.S. started tracking such data in 2009.

The report also found that in the first six months of 2021, 32% of all civilian casualties were children.

Billions of dollars of weapons

The U.S. has provided an estimated $83 billion worth of training and equipment to Afghan security forces since 2001. This year, the U.S. military aid to Afghan forces was $3 billion. But putting a total on American military equipment still in Afghanistan is not easy to do.

“We don't have a complete picture, obviously, of where every article of defense materials has gone, but certainly a fair amount of it has fallen into the hands of the Taliban,” White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan said in August in a report by The Hill. “And obviously, we don’t have a sense that they are going to readily hand it over to us at the airport.”

The totals to the right are from a Government Accountability Office audit of military gear provided by the U.S. to Afghanistan (August 2017). In addition, the Special Inspector General For Afghanistan Reconstruction audit showed there were $174 million in lost Scaneagle drones as of July 2020.