The heart rejoices - by Richard... Thursday, September 23, 2010

The heart rejoices - by Richard... Thursday, September 23, 2010

... to see this report in Der Speigel. But what took it so long? I recall writing a whole series of postsin 2008 addressing such issues, and in one of the series, I quoted the award-winning journalist Fariba Nawa and her 2006 report on the reconstruction programme in Afghanistan. In it, she wrote:

Afghans are losing their faith in the development experts whose job is to reconstruct and rebuild their country. While the quality of life for most is modestly improved, they were promised much more. What the people see is a handful of foreign companies setting priorities for reconstruction that make the companies wealthy, yet are sometimes absurdly contrary to what is necessary.

Then, last year, we had the famous Ferris wheel which gave eloquent testimony to the bankruptcy of the programme.

There is no one with any understanding of the situation in Afghanistan who will tell you that the NGOs are anything other than pure poison, along with most of the government aid programmes. They are doing more harm than good, and will continue to do so for as long as we support them.

Now this is not new information – as we ourselves show – but still it goes on, and on and on. And that is the curse of modern society (and perhaps even of society in general). Long after you know something is a crock of sh*t, it still goes on because there seems to be no way of stopping it.

But why are we so surprised that the whole thing is going belly up?