OUR JOB IS TO DESTABILIZE, NOT BUY OFF:

Though now formally independent, Afghanistan's economic situation had been shaped by British influence for decades. Britain relied heavily on buying off regional leaders to extend its influence, making the country almost entirely reliant on foreign aid. By flooding Afghanistan with payoffs, bribes and aid, the British created a system of endemic corruption in which local chieftains and favorable bureaucrats would enrich themselves while the rest of the country remained relatively poor.

During the Cold War, the United States and the Soviet Union exploited this economic situation as a means to extend their competing spheres of influence. The two superpowers funneled large sums of money into Afghanistan ostensibly for infrastructure projects that claimed to modernize the country. For example, the Salang Tunnel built by Soviet engineers from 1958 to1964 connected northern Afghanistan with Kabul. The United States launched the Helmand Valley Project, which built dams and irrigation systems to modernize agriculture in the region.

Reliance on foreign aid was a central tenant of Afghan President Daud Khan's policy in the mid-1970s. Having overthrown his cousin King Zahir Shah in a bloodless coup in 1973, Khan relied heavily on aid available from the United States and the Soviet Union to modernize Afghanistan. He famously described his diplomatic maneuvering, commenting, "I feel happiest when I light my American cigarette with Soviet matches."

Yet it would be exactly his reliance on foreign money that would prove his undoing. In a country where the government was a major employer and where that government relied on foreign aid, corruption ran rampant. Technocrats and bureaucrats would skim from the money flowing in from the outside. This produced an economy that could not meet the needs of ordinary Afghans, making Afghanistan ripe for revolution.

In 1978, the Soviet-backed People's Democratic Party of Afghanistan overthrew President Khan in what would eventually be called the Saur Revolution. One of the revolution's primary objectives was to stem the tide of corruption and create a new economic model to benefit all Afghans. Yet it didn't happen. The tide of foreign payments continued as the Soviet Union propped up the new government. Meanwhile, the United States helped fund groups and local militias that resisted the Soviet-aligned government by funneling funds through Pakistan's intelligence services, the ISI. This quickly fueled and escalated the conflict and in December 1979 the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan, overthrowing its allies and installing a new president.

Thus, during the final decade of the Cold War, the powerful groups in Afghanistan -- the Soviet-backed government and the U.S.-supported insurgents -- continued the pattern set by the British, with power built through payoffs, bribes and aid.

And now decades later, the United States seems to have continued this approach. The release of the Afghanistan Papers revealed that over the course of the past 20 years the United States flooded Afghanistan with a trillion dollars, which quickly went into the hands of various military contractors and advisers and lined the pockets of government officials. Like the British before it, the United States adopted a policy of paying off and co-opting local warlords and drug traffickers. One executive is quoted by The Washington Post as saying, "We lost objectivity. We were given money, told to spend it and did, without reason." Meanwhile, war merchants, profiteers and contractors enjoyed hefty paychecks in Kabul.

Indeed, when the Taliban troops took Mazar-e Sharif, social media was awash with videos of them entering the palace of Gen. Abdurrashid Dostum, a regional warlord and member of the U.S.-backed Ghani government. Ostentatious couches lined opulent rooms decorated in gold and silver. The stark contrast of the ragtag, dusty insurgents surrounded by the extravagance of the former residence of a government official visually captured the reality of the situation: The United States entrenched a system of corruption that was first established by the British Empire, was fostered during the Cold War and had now become the 20-year legacy of the war in Afghanistan.

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