Recording: Learning From Aid Spending in Afghanistan for other Fragile/Conflict States

The Taliban takeover in August 2021 ended a 20-year international military and civilian intervention to stabilise Afghanistan and rebuild its institutions, economy and society. Despite providing tens of billions of US dollars in civilian aid, the international community failed to enable Afghanistan to build a viable state which commanded sufficient public support to resist the Taliban insurgency. The country is now in a state of near collapse with an estimated 24.4 million people in need of humanitarian support and the international community is divided on how best to respond to the crisis.

Join the Independent Commission for Aid Impact (ICAI), which scrutinises UK government aid spending, and the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR), the US government’s leading oversight authority on Afghanistan reconstruction, as they come together with RUSI to discuss lessons learned from their reports on aid to Afghanistan, and crucially how these can be applied in other contexts across the globe to ensure mistakes made in Afghanistan are not repeated.