Source:
Los Angeles TimesStymied in quest to bolster small businesses in Iraq
An American consultant spends a frustrating year in Baghdad trying to set up a development center.
By Cyndia Zwahlen, Special to The Times
April 7, 2008
Southern California small-business consultant Phil Borden went to Iraq with high hopes for playing a small part in rebuilding the tattered economy.
The yearlong venture shredded that dream.
Charged with taking over a failed effort by a State Department contractor to create a national model of a profitable small-business development center, Borden expected to use his considerable stateside experience helping entrepreneurs. But the deaths of co-workers, locals and American soldiers -- and the continuing absurdities of trying to do business in a war zone -- took their toll.
"I learned that meaning well and doing well are two different things," said Borden, a Palos Verdes resident, whose role was confirmed for The Times by colleagues in Iraq and at the State Department.
...
"I began my year in Baghdad's Red Zone wrapped in a flak jacket, Kevlar under-shorts and hope that I could create a small beachhead for economic sanity in an ocean of madness. . . . Over time, I increasingly came to understand that I had deluded myself."
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