Though some say it is wishful thinking to be talking today about the reconstruction of Ukraine (they have to win first), it is never too early to pull out lessons learned from the last fiasco, in hopes they can be baked in to whatever eventual process is undertaken. That’s why a group of senators asked […]

Short Answer: It’s been 15+ years of coalition and the Taliban are still there, the Afghan government in Kabul is even more corrupt, and most of Afghanistan is as economically decrepit as ever. A report, “Lessons From the Coalition,” emerged from a conference co-hosted by the U.S. Institute of Peace (yes, we have one, it […]

The war in Afghanistan is ready to enter its 16th year (if it was a kid it’s be ready to start driving) and by most definitions is pretty much a bust. Despite that, both mainstream candidates have made it clear in public statements they intend to continue pouring money — and lives — into that […]

The United States government spent over $42,000 per Afghan to create 500 jobs over there. And that’s the good news. The ever-cheerful Special Inspector General for Afghan Reconstruction (SIGAR; we have been paying to rebuild Afghanistan for the past 15 years with no end in sight) just released their inspection report on the State Department/USAID-funded […]

If at where you work you spent $759 million on something, and then told your boss you have no idea if anything was accomplished, and that the little data you do have is probably fraudulent, how might that work out for you? If you are the U.S. government in Afghanistan, you would actually have no […]

Hey, did you wake up today wondering what was going on in Afghanistan, America’s 51st state, you know, the one we’ve been occupying for over 14 years, that one where thousands of Americans have died and where thousands still serve? Yeah, that Afghanistan. The truth? Things kinda suck donkey over there. Sure, of course, I […]

What did you get for Christmas these last six years? The U.S. government was nice enough to gift our loyal friends the Afghans $17 billion of your tax money, and, in the true spirit of giving, asked nothing in return for itself. What that means in actual dollars and nonsense is that the U.S. government […]

As Obama fails on another campaign promise, this one to end the war in Afghanistan, and as that war moves into its 15th year, it is important to remember the U.S. has spent around $110 billion (no one knows the exact amount due to poor record keeping) to “rebuild” that beleaguered nation, so far. We […]

No one knows — literally, geographically, physically — what happened to $210 million in American taxpayer money spent by USAID, a part of your U.S. Department of State, on Afghan health programs. This is not a case of “well, it went to buy a heck of a lot of filing cabinets,” or “it was flushed […]

USAID just got caught wasting $769 million not supporting Afghanistan’s education sector. How could this happen?!? As a public service, here are your step-by-step instructions. — Start with the premise that schools in a wasteland like Afghanistan in support of a failed American policy are more important uses of American taxpayer money than schools in […]

Keeping abreast of the waste of U.S. taxpayer money in Afghanistan’s so-called “reconstruction” is a full-time job. Since I already have a full-time job and can’t do it, luckily the Special Inspector General for Afghan Reconstruction (SIGAR) does document the waste as a full-time job. Here are just a few updates. Kandahar Industrial Park The […]

The American reconstruction campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan have, and continue, to spend billions of taxpayer dollars on pointless projects seemingly designed solely to funnel money into the pockets of U.S. government contractors. Empowering Women These projects (Iraq War examples are detailed in my book We Meant Well: How I Helped Lose the Battle for […]

The Special Inspector General for Afghan Reconstruction (SIGAR) issued a scathing report showing the Department of State gave a staggering 87 percent of all Afghan reconstruction funds to only five recipients. In fact, 69 percent of all taxpayer money spent went to just one contractor. Much Money into Few Hands SIGAR tells us the top-five […]

Pomegranate Peace, a new novel by Rashmee Roshan Lall, is a funny, sad and all-too-true piece of fiction about the failure of U.S. reconstruction efforts in Afghanistan, and about the crippling isolation America’s diplomats impose on themselves in that misguided war. The novel is also a cookbook, but we’ll get to that later. Pomegranates for […]

There is, clearly to at least two or three people in Washington, no greater threat to American safety and security than Cuba. America has had a Cold War hard-on over Cuba for decades, and so spending millions of taxpayer dollars on it, even if it means a lot of that money actually and knowingly gets […]

When a person sees things that aren’t there, hears voices that tell him to do irrational things and insists on believing things that simply are not supported by fact, most psychologists would label that person delusional and seek to help him regain his toehold on reality. When that person does all the same things regarding […]

This article first appeared on the Huffington Post. One (of thousands) of examples of how we lost the war for the hearts and minds of the Iraqi people was our shoddy management of the things we built. To be fair, the lack of oversight was often due to our own limited personnel (in numbers and […]

Because of this blog, I occasionally receive emails from people who also participated in the reconstruction programs in Iraq and Afghanistan. Most writers are civilians, a few military. With the writer’s permission, I publish some of the letters here. Today’s I publish to call attention to the very real issue of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder […]

One of the issues in the current presidential election is the role of government in creating infrastructure as a path to economic prosperity and job creation. One side argues it requires government to build roads and dams, and another claims government should get out of the way and allow the free market to do what […]

The US is gearing up to drop $300 million of our taxpayer dollars on rebuilding infrastructure, in Palestine. Here is what the US plans for the Palestinians. Can anyone find a town in America which would not benefit from $300 million worth of work in: • Transportation networks such as primary and secondary roads, bridges […]

The default media plan at State is to follow anything negative in the press with a planted puff piece. Rather than tackle the facts in a negative story (seeking to refute them with other information, or to make corrections), State’s modus is to seek ink that just says everything is actually wonderful, without mentioning the […]

Andrew Exum blogs as “Abu Muqawama” at World Politics Review. A recent column, State, USAID Must Learn From Afghanistan Errors, explains the State Department to you. The bold emphasis below is added as Andrew is too polite to have done so himself. In the month since Washington Post reporter Rajiv Chandrasekaran published Little America: The […]

After wasting half the money, the US terminated a $20 million project to develop a Pakistani version of Sesame Street, the US Embassy announced. The decision came as a Pakistani newspaper reported allegations of corruption by the local puppet theater working on the initiative. The Pakistan Today newspaper reported Tuesday that the cause was “severe” […]

The Washington Post has an important article online and in print criticizing the World’s Most Expensive Embassy (c) for choosing to not provide a complete list of all the projects undertaken as part of the reconstruction of Iraq. “After eight years, we still don’t have a full account of what it was we provided the […]

Yea Juggalos, we’re winning again in America’s Never-Ending-Gob-Smacker-Sucker of a war, the Afghan-Taliban-Pakistan Warapalooza! For those who have been in a coma or tied up Occupying somewhere, we have been defeating the Taliban for the past ten+ years in Afghanistan, and reconstructing that same place for pretty much the last ten+ years. But for reconstruction, […]

Not to disturb anyone’s TV viewing, but a former senior construction manager pleaded guilty today to seeking $190,000 in payments as a reward for steering U.S.-funded contracts in Afghanistan. Neil P. Campbell, 61, of Queensland, Australia, pleaded guilty today in U.S. District Court to one count of accepting an illegal payment. According to court records, […]

Four bombs ripped through Shiite neighborhoods in Baghdad Thursday evening, killing at least 40 people in the worst violence the capital has seen in months, Iraqi officials said. Stay tuned for the Shiite retaliatory attack in the next day or two, followed by the Sunni re-retaliatory attack, followed by the… An American civilian aid specialist […]

Though State maintains a warm spot in my heart, for brazen incompetence you just can’t beat USAID, the US Government’s Santa Claus agency abroad. I could write one of these articles daily about how some USAID project in Iraq or Afghanistan wasted money, failed to accomplish anything, failed to appear or was consumed by fraud blah […]

The Washington Post’s Rajiv Chandrasekaran (who wrote one of the better books about the early days in Iraq, Imperial Life in the Emerald City, summed up the ongoing failure of reconstruction in Afghanistan in two simple paragraphs: US commanders and diplomats had hoped that the new programs would assist in cementing recent military gains against […]

My year in Iraq, and our efforts to reach the hearts and minds of Iraqis, was focused on the work of the PRTs, the Provincial Reconstruction Teams. Some stood alone, with their own security and administrative staff, some were embedded and dependent on the military (ePRT). Here’s what Embassy Baghdad has to say about what […]