Afghanistan IG says it was ‘not surprising’ how country fell to Taliban: ‘All the signs have been there’

The Biden administration was taken by surprise by the Taliban’s swift victory in Afghanistan, but according to the head of the watchdog agency who has been reporting on the situation on the ground for years, none of this should have come as a shock.

John Sopko, the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR), told NPR Sunday that the signs have been there for nearly a decade.

“No. It’s not surprising. I mean, we’ve been warning – my little agency – for the last almost 10 years about issues with the ANDSF, that’s the Afghan security forces’ capabilities and sustainment,” Sopko said. “All the signs have been there.”

Sopko pointed to how he himself has testified “50 or 60 times about this” and how SIGAR had released multiple reports going back to 2012 “about changing metrics … ghost soldiers who didn’t exist, about poor logistics, about the fact that the Afghans couldn’t sustain what we were giving them.”- READ MORE