The US Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR), John Sopko said that corruption was the greatest challenge in Afghanistan and it “undermined” the US entire mission in the country.

Speaking at an event at the Royal United Services Institute of UK?, he said the US lost “a lot of money" and "not only did a lot of money and goods and services" go to "the Taliban and other insurgents" but it also "lost the morale of the Afghan people, and the Afghan government, and turned many of the Afghan people away from the coalition.”

Sopko said that Washington itself contributed to the corruption problem as it sent “so much money so quickly to poor a country with so little oversight that we actually were giving more money than a gross domestic product of Afghanistan for a number of years.”

“The United States alone were giving more than over a hundred percent of the GDP,” he said.

Political analyst Mooen Gul Samkani said: “The US is one of those countries that when it goes to a country and attacks it, major American companies join in to provide logistic and weapons support in a bid to earn more money in the initial days.”

Wahid Faqiri, a political analyst, said that the US played an important role in the creation of corruption in Afghanistan.

“During the 20 years of the US mission, it (US) had an influential role in administrative corruption and it mainly relied on corrupt people,” he said.

Sopko also underscored challenges to coordinate between the US and “50 some countries” and international organizations operating in Afghanistan.

“But equally, we had problems with 20 or 30 different US government agencies operating in Afghanistan. And that was a serious problem,” he said.