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<DIV dir=ltr>
<DIV dir=ltr><FONT size=2><FONT size=4>Plunderers and Prey
</FONT><BR>http://www.counterpunch.org/2012/12/05/usaid-in-afghanistan/<BR></DIV></FONT>
<H1 dir=ltr>USAID in Afghanistan</H1>
<DIV dir=ltr><FONT size=2>by MARK GRAHAM <BR>Whatever beneficence USAID has
doled out over the years has come with a heavy price for Afghans and a heavy
price tag for Americans. In fact, USAID is not an aid organization by any common
understanding of the term, if by aid we mean helping people who are suffering
out of the kindness of our hearts. Instead, USAID functions primarily as an
instrument of </FONT><U><FONT color=#0000ff size=2><FONT color=#0000ff
size=2>counterinsurgency</U></FONT></FONT><FONT size=2> and as a pipeline by
which public money moves into private hands. What happens after that transaction
takes place matters little to policy makers in Washington.<BR>It’s a sad story
that’s been going on since at least the 1980s when the Afghan-Soviet War led
America to initiate covert operations supporting Islamist guerilla armies and
political parties in both Afghanistan and Pakistan. While the CIA played a huge
part in the game, along with Saudi Arabia and ISI (Pakistani Intelligence) USAID
stepped in to do its anticommunist part. With a </FONT><U><FONT color=#0000ff
size=2><FONT color=#0000ff size=2>grant of $51 million
dollars</U></FONT></FONT><FONT size=2> between 1984-94, it funded the University
of Nebraska’s Afghanistan Studies Center and its leader Thomas Gouttierre, who
produced a series of now infamous textbooks for schoolchildren.<BR>The most
detailed account of these books was written by Craig S. Davis in his 2002
article for <I>World Policy Journal</I>, "</FONT><U><FONT color=#0000ff
size=2><FONT color=#0000ff size=2>A is for Allah, J is for
Jihad</U></FONT></FONT><FONT size=2>." Instead of simply instructing Afghan
children in the 3Rs, these texts inserted anti-Communist and religious
sentiments into grammar exercises and word problems. For
homework:<BR></DIV></FONT>
<BLOCKQUOTE dir=ltr>"One group of mujahidin attack 50 Russian soldiers. In
that attack 20 Russians were killed. How many Russians fled?"</BLOCKQUOTE>
<BLOCKQUOTE dir=ltr>Dal [is for] Religion (din). Our religion is Islam. The
Russians are the enemies of the religion of Islam.</BLOCKQUOTE>
<DIV dir=ltr><FONT size=2>By the time the United States had taken over the
attack on Afghanistan from the Soviet Union, it was clear that this kind of
short-sighted brainwashing had been a major force in shaping the fanatical
worldviews of a generation of Afghan refugees—boys who would grow up to become
members of the Taliban.<BR>But jihadist textbooks are so yesterday, so Mom and
Pop. Flash forward to the twenty-first century and you get USAID corporate
style, doling out billions to a select circle of war profiteers. For the War on
Terror, USAID turned to another contractor to provide education reform for the
newly "liberated" Afghanistan. Creative Associates International, Inc. (CAII,)
may sound like a literary agency but in fact it’s a Beltway Bandit with 90% of
its funding coming from USAID. Not coincidentally, CAII handed Craig S. Davis a
piece of the action in Peshawar. His article had deftly criticized CAII’s rival
the U of Nebraska for its role in creating the Taliban while not once mentioning
USAID’s financial support of the venture. Since finishing his PhD work at IU
Bloomington on Mughal sovereigns, Davis (author of </FONT><I><FONT color=#0000ff
size=2><FONT color=#0000ff size=2>The Middle East for
Dummies</I></FONT></FONT><FONT size=2>) seems to have spent most of his time
studying the Middle East in-depth in places like Iraq and Afghanistan. Just what
exactly that study entailed can be explained by looking at CAII’s penchant for
espionage.<BR>CAII’s track record elsewhere in the world testifies to a
relentless pursuit of free market fundamentalism and vigorous counterinsurgency.
Kenneth Saltman has </FONT><U><FONT color=#0000ff size=2><FONT color=#0000ff
size=2>documented CAII’s work</U></FONT></FONT><FONT size=2> "reintegrating
Contra terrorists into Nicaraguan civil society through work training;
influencing Nicaraguan elections; participating in both coups against Aristide
in Haiti; and privatizing, commercializing, and Americanizing Haitian media and
journalism particularly around election coverage." In Afghanistan the purported
goal of "promoting democracy" in reality fosters dependency on foreign sponsors,
and privatizes and depoliticizes education and the media. Recently the Afghan
Ministry of Education, which works closely with CAII, has decided to
</FONT><U><FONT color=#0000ff size=2><FONT color=#0000ff size=2>omit all recent
history</U></FONT></FONT><FONT size=2> (read the past thirty years of war) from
its curriculum. You can’t buy that kind of thought control—unless you have a few
hundred million.<BR>Of course CAII doesn’t just restrict itself to Orwellian
revisionism. It also plays a part in covert operations. In 2009, Pakistani
journalists Ahmed Quraishi and Shireen Mazari reported that the </FONT><U><FONT
color=#0000ff size=2><FONT color=#0000ff size=2><U><FONT color=#0000ff
size=2><FONT color=#0000ff size=2>CAII</FONT></FONT></U> headquarters in
Peshawar</U></FONT></FONT><FONT size=2> was being used as a front for
Blackwater/Xe mercenaries (aka the "CIA’s private army") to stage raids into the
border area between Pakistan and Afghanistan. A CAII employee was formally
expelled from the country, only to return sometime later. His name: Craig Davis.
By now you might notice that an anagram for CAII is I, CIA.<BR>For those in the
great game of international development in Afghanistan, skullduggery goes hand
in hand with more mundane kinds of criminality. Thus USAID has also invested
billions in vastly expensive construction projects with lofty goals of bringing
electricity to millions, building roads, replacing opium cultivation with
sustainable agriculture and so forth. Not surprisingly, these projects have
little to do with improving the lives of Afghans and all to do with enriching
the pockets of those select few contractors who follow the smoke of war like a
clutch of vultures.<BR>While everyone’s heard of Halliburton, there are several
others who have yet to become household names. Nevertheless corporations like
Louis Berger and Black & Veatch play a major part in Afghan "development."
Like most war profiteering <IMG alt=""
src="http://www.counterpunch.org/wp-content/dropzone/2012/09/grahamafghancinema.jpeg"
width=200 height=300>corporations, </FONT><U><FONT color=#0000ff size=2><FONT
color=#0000ff size=2>Louis Berger has had major problems</U></FONT></FONT><FONT
size=2> with fraud, corruption, and slapdash work. In eight years, they and a
few other major contractors (with help from the British military) have been
unable to complete work on the Kajaki dam in Helmand Province, despite pocketing
hundreds of millions of dollars. U.S. Representative Ed Markey, a Democrat from
Massachusetts said, "Kajaki Dam was supposed to be a show piece of the strategy
in Afghanistan, but it has gone nowhere." If anybody profits from this it’s the
Taliban—who collect revenues generated by the still unfinished dam. And of
course, Louis Berger made a killing. In 2006 a whistleblower offered evidence
demonstrating Louis Berger systematically overbilled USAID. They eventually paid
a $70 <I>million</I> dollar fine. USAID took it in stride, awarding them (along
with Black and Veatch) a 1.4 billion dollar contract to renovate the Afghan
electrical infrastructure, including the </FONT><U><FONT color=#0000ff
size=2><FONT color=#0000ff size=2><U><FONT color=#0000ff size=2><FONT
color=#0000ff size=2>Tarakhil</FONT></FONT></U> power
plant</U></FONT></FONT><FONT size=2>, near Kabul.<BR>USAID low-balled the
estimate to Karzai’s government, which kicked in $20 million of Afghan money to
the project in the hopes it would, as promised, bring electricity to 500,000
people and bolster the popularity of the "Mayor of Kabul." Once in the hands of
LB and B & V, however, costs skyrocketed to $257 million. Against the wishes
of the Afghans, the beltway bandits concocted a facility that was not powered by
natural gas from Afghanistan’s own Sheberghan gas fields, but instead with
expensive diesel oil that had to be imported from Turkmenistan. With the price
of diesel skyrocketing, the Afghans soon had a fabulously expensive and
worthless power plant, the operation costs of which would equal 25% of
Afghanistan’s entire annual tax revenue.<BR>Oxfam’s head of policy in
Afghanistan, Ashley Jackson, has stated, "</FONT><U><FONT color=#0000ff
size=2><FONT color=#0000ff size=2>A system has emerged</U></FONT></FONT><FONT
size=2> where USAID is basically like a pass-through for these contractors."
American and other Western companies operate with impunity in Afghanistan, where
</FONT><U><FONT color=#0000ff size=2><FONT color=#0000ff size=2>human
trafficking</U></FONT></FONT><FONT size=2> provides an "invisible army" of
laborers working at slave wages. Meanwhile they can bill the government whatever
they wish for services. One of USAID’s major contractors, built </FONT><U><FONT
color=#0000ff size=2><FONT color=#0000ff size=2>a gravel
road</U></FONT></FONT><FONT size=2> for which they charged American taxpayers
2.8 million dollars. It was supposed to cost $290,000. Nevertheless, USAID
continues to outsource development to unscrupulous profiteers, while thanks to
budget cuts it has neither the staff nor the wherewithal to supervise where the
money goes.<BR>As a result USAID persists in doing business with firms like
PADCO, whose Alternative Development Program/North was to have built roads,
improved agriculture, irrigated canals and constructed dams. Ostensibly for the
purpose of </FONT><U><FONT color=#0000ff size=2><FONT color=#0000ff
size=2>weaning Afghan farmers off opium cultivation in
Badakshan</U></FONT></FONT><FONT size=2>, PADCO’s project did not get the green
light because the Afghans there are hungry or need help. It’s all part of the
counterinsurgency drive to deprive the Taliban of their drug revenue. It ended
in 2009 with millions of wasted dollars and still no electricity to the Afghans
there. An Afghan engineer interviewed by the </FONT><U><FONT color=#0000ff
size=2><FONT color=#0000ff size=2>Christian Science
Monitor</U></FONT></FONT><FONT size=2> said, "Fifty percent they didn’t do. They
just dug this … and left." A 2.5 million dollar road PADCO built disintegrated
in three months. Their shoddy construction on the million-dollar Baharak canal
included "incomplete concrete walls and drainage culverts – result[ing] in
landslides blocking water flow to the turbine and, in turn, electricity from
reaching any homes." Meanwhile $650,000 hydropower feasibility studies
"disappeared." But every cloud has a silver lining. PADCO managed to construct
thirty new veterinary clinics. At least the animals are happy—</FONT><U><FONT
color=#0000ff size=2><FONT color=#0000ff size=2>sometimes</U></FONT></FONT><FONT
size=2>.<BR>It’s just the people who are miserable, including those serviced by
</FONT><U><FONT color=#0000ff size=2><FONT color=#0000ff size=2><U><FONT
color=#0000ff size=2><FONT color=#0000ff
size=2>Chemonics</FONT></FONT></U></U></FONT></FONT><FONT size=2>. Awarded
hundreds of millions of dollars in contracts in Afghanistan, Chemonics ranks
just behind Halliburton and Bechtel in scarfing up tax dollar-funded development
projects. Like some of the other usual suspects in Afghanistan, it doesn’t
always take meticulous care in the execution of its projects. In Haiti,
</FONT><U><FONT color=#0000ff size=2><FONT color=#0000ff size=2><U><FONT
color=#0000ff size=2><FONT color=#0000ff size=2>USAID</FONT></FONT></U> hired
Chemonics</U></FONT></FONT><FONT size=2> to build a temporary parliament
building for $173 million. When the contractor pulled out, parliament had a
debris-laden, unusable frame that Haiti, one of the poorest countries in the
world, had to spent three quarters of a million to make
habitable.<BR>Afghanistan fared no better. Pulitzer Prize winner David Rohde has
described Chemonics activities in Helmand province for </FONT><U><FONT
color=#0000ff size=2><FONT color=#0000ff size=2>Reuters</U></FONT></FONT><FONT
size=2>, focusing on agricultural development. Naturally Chemonics itself didn’t
do the work. Like so many other USAID contractors, the corporation in turn
subcontracted its projects to a series of shady operators including one
"Williams" who made three quarters of a million doing substandard work, spending
much of the money on security and making side-profits like renting rooms to
contractors and journalists for fifty dollars a night.<BR>Elsewhere in Helmand
USAID reps Rory Donohoe and Loren Stoddard attempted to initiate chili pepper
farms. The project was based on one Stoddard had pioneered in Guatemala, whereby
farmers sold their US taxpayer-subsidized chili peppers to Walmart, for the
purposes of further enriching the Walton family. After villagers began to take
the chili peppers from their own fields, USAID hired armed security guards to
keep the people from eating their own food. It’s an apt metaphor for USAID:
using public money to force developing nations into growing food for private
profit in the US. When the farmers try to feed themselves—shoot them.<BR>This
bonanza of bucks, fostered by an endless war, has drawn corporate parasites to
the public feeding trough for over a decade. The results should be clear by now:
rampant corruption, cut-rate workmanship, broken promises, failed opportunities
and billions upon billions of American money squandered by corporate con men who
not only defraud taxpayers but also the recipients of America’s presumably
well-meaning "aid." USAID does anything but promote democracy and development.
Its association with the word "aid" is a cruel joke—masking its true objective:
a new era of neoliberal colonialism that uses the raw material and desperation
of vulnerable countries to augment the most predatory and immoral brand of
gangster capitalism.<BR><B><I>Mark Graham</B> is a high school teacher in the
Lehigh Valley. He’s books include: </FONT><U><FONT color=#0000ff size=2><FONT
color=#0000ff size=2>How Islam Created the Modern World</U></FONT></FONT><FONT
size=2> and </FONT><U><FONT color=#0000ff size=2><FONT color=#0000ff
size=2>Afghanistan in the Cinema</U></FONT></FONT><FONT size=2>.
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