TONY KARUMBA/AFP/GETTYIMAGES
LONG AND
WINDING ROADS
Now the PRT had to find a way to close
at least three of the stations. This had
recently resulted in a series of frank and
rather uncomfortable meetings with the
owners of the stations that had to go.
In a perverse way, the PRT’s problem
was not that their projects had failed, but
that they had succeeded too much. It was
a problem that was plaguing development
projects across the country. The looming
failure of beloved western-funded projects was something the SIGAR report had
specifically cited as endangering counterinsurgency hopes.
USAID officials don’t dispute that
sustainability has been a shortcomU.S. Army
soldiers
check an
elderly
Afghani man
for hidden
explosives or
weapons.
HUFFINGTON
10.14.12
ing of theirs, but they insist that it was
never neglected. “I won’t lie and say that
there’s always been as robust a focus
on sustainability as we would like,” said
Larry Sampler, the top USAID deputy assistant for Afghanistan, in an interview.
“But it’s always been there. Sustainability is a core value of development.”
Last month, the Guardian reported
that the Brits in Helmand faced an identical, if more unsettling, situation: They
were planning to close numerous schools
and clinics that they has spent millions of
dollars building, because they had determined the Afghan government couldn’t
afford to keep them open.