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The Pentagon this month will terminate a critical task force responsible for combating corruption in Afghanistan as it tries to reach President Obamas target force of 9,800 U.S. troops in the country adding to concerns about oversight and accountability in a government rife with waste, fraud and abuse.

Shuttering the Combined Inter-Agency Task Force-Afghanistan, originally founded in 2010 to ensure U.S. spending was not aiding Americas enemies in the war-torn nation, is likely to have dark consequences, according to a growing number of analysts wary that Washington lacks a comprehensive strategy to control rampant corruption in Kabul.

The move is indicative of President Obamas blind rush to cut down on troops, says David Sedney, who served from 2009 to 2013 as deputy assistant secretary of defense for Afghanistan, Pakistan and Central Asia. Mr. Sedney said the development is injecting instability into the international communitys anti-corruption efforts in Afghanistan just as the countrys new leaders are showing a promising willingness to combat fraud and mismanagement.

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Those capabilities are being taken away just when they could be more useful, Mr. Sedney said.

There are people who have worked on that task force who were waiting two, three, four years to have a chance to be put into action and go after the corrupt actors that they collected so much information on, he said. They werent able to do it when President Karzai was there, because he wasnt going to go after corruption. And now that they have a president there that is willing to go after corruption, this is being disbanded.

Pentagon officials disclosed the plan to disassemble the task force by Oct. 31 in a letter last month to Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction John F. Sopko, who was seeking information on plans to combat corruption past the U.S. troop departure.

Mr. Sopko said he warned the Defense Department in July that maintaining initiatives to stem corruption would grow increasingly complex during the U.S. military drawdown, and the answers he got from the Pentagon have only sparked additional concerns.

I appreciate the Commands detailed response, but its still not clear to me what priority anti-corruption programs will be given in the future, Mr. Sopko said. Corruption is a poison which threatens all the gains and investments weve made in Afghanistan, and its critical that robust and continuing anti-corruption measures be at the forefront of our efforts.

The response to Mr. Sopkos inquiry, penned by task force commander Maj. Gen. Bert K. Mizusawa, said the unit would have to be sacrificed in order to accommodate the 9,800 cap for U.S. military forces in Afghanistan. And it contained a sobering portrayal of U.S. efforts to establish accountability controls within the Afghan government.

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Afghanistan anti-corruption task force shuttered amid U.S. troop drawdown