Description: David H. Young
17 August 2021
An exceptional team I had the honor of leading has written a 20-year retrospective about the U.S. effort to rebuild Afghanistan and the lessons the U.S. refused to learn along the way. Afghanistan’s trajectory is deeply unsettling and much of it is our fault. Understanding how we got here is important.
Our report details how the U.S. government struggled to develop a coherent strategy, understand how long the reconstruction mission would take, staff the mission with trained professionals, account for the challenges posed by insecurity, tailor efforts to the Afghan context, and understand the impact of programs.