The United States Congress has appropriated nearly $65 billion towards the training since 2002. But a quarterly report released last week by the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR) said the command had made an “unprecedented” decision to classify much of the information about the effort — including how much the U.S. spent on food for the Afghan army, and literacy training.
The decision this week to declassify the information will mean more transparency and prevent wrongdoing, Steven Aftergood, director of the Federation of American Scientists Project on Government Secrecy, told FRONTLINE.
“This is a major national enterprise, and effective public oversight is needed to keep it on an even footing to combat corruption, which is rife in Afghanistan, and to minimize the problems of mismanagement,” he said. “If you look at the series of SIGAR reports, they are consistently full of harsh findings concerning corruption, mismanagement, ineffectiveness — and this kind of reporting is essential if there is to be any hope of improving matters.”
SIGAR spokesman Alex Bronstein-Moffly said the organization was still trying to determine how much material will be declassified." Continues
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