Billions Down the Drain in Useless US Afghan Aid

[Hannah Bell]

Beautiful but fake photographs are often the only evidence that companies have carried out expensive aid projects located in parts of Afghanistan too dangerous for donors to visit.

“I went to see a food processing plant in the east of the country which was meant to employ 250 women,” says an Afghan who used to work for an American government aid organization. “We had started the project and were paying for the equipment and the salaries. But when I visited the site all I found was a few people working on a vegetable plot the size of a small room.”

When he angrily complained about the non-existent plant he was told by a local official to keep his mouth shut. He said that “if I did not keep quiet there would be trouble on the road back to Jalalabad – in other words they would kill me.”

As President Obama prepares his review of how his Afghan strategy is working to be issued next week he is likely to focus on military progress. But the most extraordinary failure of the US-led coalition in Afghanistan is that the expenditure of tens of billions of dollars has had so little impact on the misery in which 30 million Afghans live. Since 2001 the US alone has provided $52 billion in aid...

http://www.counterpunch.org/

[DrDan]

1. I am sure some pretty lavish vacation homes have been purchased at our expense

[Monk06]

2. It's all going to Karzai's bank accounts in Switzerland. If Afghanistan fails he wins tout court n/t

[DrDan]

3. why limit giving our tax dollars to only domestic wealthy - think globally -

[cowcommander]

4. What a clusterfuck...

...goddamnit Obama, what are you trying to accomplish? :(

[sendero]

5. We've been throwing money around.

.... like candy in Iraq and Afghanistan. Paying bribes, funding projects that never materialize, and on and on. We're talking 10s of billions if not more. Plus, we are paying contractor absurd sums to do the things that enlisted men used to do for a pittance.

But we cannot afford unemployment for the victims of the banksters and we cannot afford health care that isn't legal extortion.

War is a racket, period.

[saigon68]

6. Criiminals in State Dept allowing this shit to go on

All the time protected by Black water and other thug mercenaries

[xchrom]

7. recommend

in the new Age of Austerity -- this is pretty horrifying.

[kenny blankenship]

8. Do you think Obama will tell us it's "hard work"?

You know that old refrain: "Our troops are the bravest lads on Earth, and our Afghan partners want peace and freedom, we haven't reached perfection over there admittedly, but we're making progress in our mission - it's hard work"

[closeupready]

9. K&R - this is outrageous.

:mad: