‘9/11 millionaires’ and mass corruption: How American money helped break Afghanistan

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• In the 20 years since 9/11, the United States has spent more than $2 trillion waging war and nation-building in Afghanistan.
  
• That money has helped create a tiny class of young, ultra-rich Afghans, many of whom made their fortunes as government contractors.
  
• But over time, these contracts helped fuel a system of mass corruption that engulfed the country and, eventually, doomed its fragile democracy.
  

WASHINGTON — $290 million every day for 7,300 days. That’s how much money America spent on 20 years of war and nation-building in Afghanistan, according to Brown University’s Costs of War project.

Yet it took just nine days for the Taliban to seize every provincial capital, dissolve the army and overthrow the U.S.-backed government in August.

When Taliban fighters seized Kabul without firing a single shot, President Joe Biden blamed Afghans for failing to defend their country.

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