No, it wasn't global warming that brought back the Taliban, but American's tolerance of massive corruption certainly hurt.

afghan bandits then, and still here

How aid billions were squandered in Afghanistan

If you want to understand the horrifying return to power of the Taliban in Afghanistan, you could delve into the history of a mountain nation that repeatedly repels foreign invaders. 

Or you could consider the saga of nine Italian goats. 

These animals from Tuscany were airlifted into the country as part of a £4.4 million scheme planned by the Pentagon to help the Afghan cashmere industry and create thousands of jobs.

The blond billy goats were sent to breed with darker females to boost the yield and quality of the luxury wool from nine million local goats. 

But several fell sick, their newly designed home was too small, huge food costs made the plans unsustainable, the intended Afghan partner pulled out, and the project chief quit in dismay. 

Those in charge could not even tell if the unfortunate goats ended up in a cooking pot. ‘We don’t know,’ said John Sopko, the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction. ‘This was so poorly managed.’

This farcical scheme perfectly symbolises the costly and corrosive folly of Western attempts to build a new society in Afghanistan, based on arrogance, arms and vast flows of aid.

Tony Blair declared it our ‘duty’ to rebuild Afghanistan as a ‘stable and democratic’ nation. 

But despite some advances in education, female empowerment and prosperity, naive foreign interventions played a damaging role in fuelling corruption, furthering divisions and fostering a mafia state, thereby assisting the return of the Taliban.

Read the full article for a nauseating recounting of this two-decade saga of corruption and incompetency (and though not mentioned, American contractors were full participants). The reporter provides multiple, detailed examples of what we turned a blind eye to, and here’s a snippet:

By 2010, a US diplomatic cable quoted the Afghan national security adviser saying ‘corruption is not just a problem for the system of governance in Afghanistan – it is the system of governance’.

But the West’s money kept flowing as shameless politicians spoke about stability: almost a trillion dollars spent by the US over two decades and £30 billion by Britain, including £3.3 billion on aid, in a country of 38 million people.

If all the international aid spent had simply been divided up among Afghans, each citizen could have become an instant millionaire. 

Instead, the poverty rate has soared in recent years to engulf more than half the population.

The big beneficiaries were the crooks in charge and the Dubai property market, where many stashed their stolen wealth. 

One powerbroker at a Kabul bank used a web of fake firms to make fraudulent loans to ministers, officials and warlords, leading to losses equivalent to one-twelfth of the size of the country’s economy.

The bank also spent £117 million on 35 luxury villas on Dubai’s Palm Jumeirah island complex, which it used for entertaining.

The slow-burn catastrophe was charted by the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction, an unusually pugnacious official body, with quarterly reports and probing investigations.

British Ministers driving up aid budgets, such as Andrew Mitchell, spoke of ‘endemic’ corruption and parliamentary reports exposed blurred focus, weak scrutiny, lack of data and ‘leakage’ of funds.

‘People ignored the corruption because it was easier than trying to fix it,’ said a British contractor who assessed UK schemes. 

Reports of what was happening did surface over the years; I read them, but that seems to have been more than the fine people in Washington did.