President Barack Obama made his first trip out of the United States since taking office on Thursday, venturing north to Canada. Canada, the United States largest trading partner, was reportedly alarmed by the Buy American provision in the stimulus package that the President signed earlier this week.
Alison Smith, Washington correspondent for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, joins Martin Savidge to discuss trade between the two countries, Canada’s troop presence in Afghanistan and Obama’s popularity with Canadians.
Read what Canadian bloggers thought of Obama’s visit and trade developments: World Focus Blogs.
Near Kabul City, in the village of Qalai Qazi, Afghanistan, stood a bright yellow health clinic built by American contractor The Louis Berger Group. It is one of 81 clinics Berger was hired to build — in addition to roads, dams, schools and other infrastructure — in exchange for $665 million in American aid money the company has received in federal contracts.
The problem was, the clinic was falling apart. The ceiling had rotted away in patches; the plumbing, when it worked, leaked and shuddered; the chimney, made of flimsy metal, threatened to set the roof on fire; the sinks had no running water; and the place smelled of sewage.
The above is from a 2006 news report by New American Media, an independent news service. Now here is a report from today’s UK Guardian:
Chronic mismanagement and profligacy are blighting reconstruction efforts in Afghanistan, international aid officials have warned, wasting up to a third of the $15bn (£10.55bn) in funding already delivered and deepening local resentment towards foreign troops stationed there.
Senior British, US and local aid workers have described a number of problems including bribery, profiteering, poor planning and incompetence. The overall effect has been to cripple the development effort structured under the Bush administration’s insistence on an unregulated and profit-driven approach to reconstruction.
“The major donor agencies operate on the mistaken assumption that it’s more efficient and profitable to do things through market mechanisms,” a senior American contractor working in Afghanistan told the Guardian on condition of anonymity. “The notion of big government is a spectre for American conservatives and this [the reconstruction process] is an American conservative project.”
The contractor said the “original plan was to get in, prop up Karzai, kill al-Qaida, privatise all government-owned enterprises and get out. It wasn’t a development project, that wasn’t a concern. Development was an afterthought.
Development cannot be afterthought nor can corruption at any level be tolerated. The stakes are too high and we no longer have a margin for error nor the luxury of time.