Mike:

Generally, when yopu go into a store to pruchase a good, you get what you pay for.

When you go into a country to nation-build, quite often you end up with a $53 Billion Fiasco, the term usually applied to the Iraq Reconstruction effort.

The numbers, to date, programmed for Afghanistan are $60 billion, an amount which, of well spent, should have long ago begun to demonstrate substantial change---but has not.

Afghans argue that ll the money gets absorbed by overhead and contractors, and only a fraction ever reaches the ground in Afghanistan. A convincing argument, by all accounts.

Now, if you want to change Afghanistan---even if by linking islands--- you really have to create a plan to link Afghan islands, and not foreign NGO contract islands. Otherwise, you can expect nothing.

Poor Sec. Vilsack went to Nawa the other day, beaming about the $20 million ag program that, as he found out, is simply US specialists giving animal vaccinations, and no Afghan gov agencies engaged.

That, at least, is better than most aid (that never reaches the ground), but follows the giving out fish mode with little possibility of progress---other than to expect the US specialists to come again next year with more shots.

Why, one might ask, can't an Afghan HS grad be trained to go around giving shots? Obviously, there are a lot more considerations to answering that question than many would like to know about (mobility, safety, cultural/tribal/language compatibility, and on...). But, for our dream state to be reached, the goal must be to get an Afghan to deliver the shots, on a sustainable basis, or the effort is merely a fish.

Where is the capacity-building component of this? (Notwithstanding the huge risks, commitments, and hardships endured by the brave US ag person giving the shots that his boss (Vilsack) sent him there to administer.

Steve