America's 20-year mission in Afghanistan can be summarized in eight paradoxes.

 

The Taliban's takeover of Afghanistan and overthrow of the US-backed government was shocking in its quickness and devastating in its consequences, but it comes as no surprise to experts who have followed the US reconstruction efforts for the previous two decades. The reasons for this might be summed up in eight paradoxes found in a recently released report by a US government monitor on the expedition.

"We can't turn back the clock in Afghanistan, but we're doing comparable work in other nations," said John Sopko, the agency's director. "And we should learn from the past 20 years rather than attempting to forget, wash it away, or put it under the rug."

The list reveals a slew of serious faults in the US strategy, many of which are the result of fundamental misconceptions — or, as the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction, or SIGAR, puts it, "a purposeful disregard for intelligence that may have been available."

The United States' goals were frequently "operationally unfeasible or conceptually nonsensical," according to the new SIGAR study, which lists eight paradoxes that the US and its allies attempted to resolve.