> According to a Pentagon analysis, 40% of the $108 billion that the Defense Department paid to contractors in Afghanistan between 2010 and 2012 ended up in the hands of either the Taliban, the violent Islamist Haqqani terror network, organized crime rings, transnational drug traffickers or corrupt Afghan officials.
But the corruption involved was just staggering, in all directions. Here's a Kyrgyz guy misappropriating Russian jet fuel and selling it to the US in 2010: https://foreignpolicy.com/2010/12/21/did-an-american-contrac... / https://www.justsecurity.org/2726/the-juice-worth-squeeze-ky...
But of course even the locals couldn't buy fuel without protection money being paid to the Taliban, so that's what the US ended up doing: https://www.cnbc.com/2021/09/10/9/11-millionaires-and-corrup...
> According to a Pentagon analysis, 40% of the $108 billion that the Defense Department paid to contractors in Afghanistan between 2010 and 2012 ended up in the hands of either the Taliban, the violent Islamist Haqqani terror network, organized crime rings, transnational drug traffickers or corrupt Afghan officials.