US, Afghanistan, Iraq, Corruption, Waste

Can Corruption Be Eradicated?: "....Every day, millions of dollars in cash were declared by couriers at Kabul International Airport, and then flown to the United Arab Emirates, where the new Afghan élite invested in real estate and Bentleys. According to the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction, the United States has, since 2002, spent a hundred and four billion dollars on rebuilding the country (nearly as much, in today’s dollars, as was spent on the Marshall Plan), a large but untold fraction of which was skimmed away by middlemen before it could produce any tangible improvement for the Afghan people. “We know all this money is coming in,” a farmer outside Kandahar told Chayes, yet there was little the local population could do as it vanished. For the average Afghan, it was like watching a slow-motion heist in broad daylight...."

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