There is now supposedly $21 billion in reconstruction assistance on the way, which is supposed to go toward fixing the hunger and 40% unemployment rate. This the most avoidable insurgency in history. Over the last 6 years the $15 billion in reconstruction and job-creation money which has been sent just went down a black hole, so that now the Taliban is getting a foothold where there was none before. Much of that money goes straight back out of the country in profits for companies like Dyncorp and Kellogg Root Brown, who take an average of 40% right off the top before a penny reaches Afghans looking for work building roads or bridges, anything, so that they don't have to join the Taliban to feed their families. [URL="http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2006/09/17/MNGIHL7B4O1.DTL"]The Talib pays $8 per day[/URL], which is good money in Afghanistan.


The incompetence of the politicians in this war, compared to the professionalism of our soldiers, would be as if after World War II people in Western Europe were left to starve, instead of benefiting from the Marshall Plan. The shame is that for only a small fraction of what it costs to maintain the military occupation, about a tenth of the cost per year, you could employ every unemployed Afghan at $10 per day and the Talib would have a hard time getting recruits.

Who pays the price of the politician's bungling this war? Our troops, who after winning the war 7 years ago with full international support and full support of the Afghan population, now may have to start winning it all over again.

It's good that Bush promised more job-creation and reconstruction assistance to Afghanistan but we have heard this before, and the heat has to be kept up to A) make sure the money is actually delivered and B) make sure it gets spent in a way that makes a difference. One thing that is clear is that the Taliban is still unpopular, but if those 40% unemployed keep having all the time in the world to think about taking the Taliban's $8 a day, more of them will. One member of the Afghanistan Study Group who is out challenging all the Bush administration's Orwellian happy talk about how well things are going in the 'Stan is Dr. Barnett Rubin, who recently went on McNeill-Lehrer. A commenter at Dr. Rubin's blog hit the nail on the head when he said:

i have been working here in kabul for several months and have had the opportunity to learn quite a bit from my afghan colleagues......the billions in development aid that have poured into afghanistan since late 2001, while not as sizeable as those that pour daily into iraq, are still nothing to sneeze at, yet i see little evidence of their impact... roads are crap, electricity is a sometime thing, water and sewer is a joke, health care is abominable, food prices are rising exponentially and food supplies are increasingly unreliable, unemployment is in the stratosphere, dire poverty is epidemic, and basic education is spotty to non-existent... where did the money go...?

i will hazard a guess as to the answer to that question... the lion's share of it goes right back to the u.s. in the pockets of those companies that consistently win the big bids - kbr, dyncorp, louis berger, etc., etc... the rest ends up in the numbered bank accounts of the returned afghan exiles who came swooping back from the u.s. and germany like vultures following the fall of the taliban to jump on the gravy train...

why hasn't an expose been done of the karzai brothers who, among them, control most of the larger contracts with coalition forces as well as a sizeable chunk of the drug business...? it's no secret here that that's the case...

in my humble opinion, security problems and associated violence would disappear practically overnight if those things that i listed above were taken care of... the irony is that the amount of money that's already been spent would have fixed those simple things several times over...
http://icga.blogspot.com/2008/05/rubin-insurgent-attacks-still-up-in.html

I have drafted legislation to insure that the next $15 billion in job-creation and reconstruction is not wasted like that last $15 bil. was. The politicians have taken to blaming the Pakistanis for all the problems, which is the new official line. This is after they've been playing footsie with Mushareff for 6 years, and letting Kandahar and Ghazni rot until the Afghans on that side of the border really had something to complain about. You'll start hearing all kinds of excuses from the pols for how they could snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. Please cut and paste the following letter [URL="http://www.visi.com/juan/congress/"]into this email form[/URL] for your congressman (enter your zip code) and ask him to sponsor and lead the fight for this legislation. Then call him/her up to make sure they get the message. Refer to the legislation as the "Jobs for Afghans" legislation, and give them the website http://jobsforafghans.org

Congressmen now being lobbied to sponsor and lead on this legislation :
[URL="http://www.visi.com/juan/congress/cgi-bin/newmemberbio.cgi?lang=&member=NC03&site=ctc&address=&city=&state=NC&zipcode=&plusfour="]Rep. Walter Jones[/URL] (R-NC, representing Camp LeJeune), [URL="http://www.visi.com/juan/congress/cgi-bin/newmemberbio.cgi?lang=&member=NC07&site=ctc&address=&city=&state=NC&zipcode=&plusfour="]Rep. Mike McIntyre[/URL] (D-NC), [URL="http://www.visi.com/juan/congress/cgi-bin/newmemberbio.cgi?lang=&member=NC08&site=ctc&address=&city=&state=NC&zipcode=&plusfour="]Rep. Robin Hayes[/URL] (R-NC), [URL="http://www.visi.com/juan/congress/cgi-bin/newmemberbio.cgi?lang=&member=NC09&site=ctc&address=&city=&state=NC&zipcode=&plusfour="]Rep. Sue Myrick[/URL] (R-NC), [URL="http://www.visi.com/juan/congress/cgi-bin/newmemberbio.cgi?lang=&member=TX31&site=ctc&address=&city=&state=TX&zipcode=&plusfour="]Rep. John Carter[/URL] (R-TX, representing Ft. Hood), [URL="http://www.visi.com/juan/congress/cgi-bin/newmemberbio.cgi?lang=&member=CA41&site=ctc&address=&city=&state=CA&zipcode=&plusfour="]Rep. Jerry Lewis[/URL] (R - CA, representing Nine Palms, 24th MEU), [URL="http://www.visi.com/juan/congress/cgi-bin/newmemberbio.cgi?lang=&member=KY01&site=ctc&address=&city=&state=KY&zipcode=&plusfour="]Rep. Edward Whitfield[/URL] (R -KY,representing Ft. Campbell), [URL="http://www.visi.com/juan/congress/cgi-bin/newmemberbio.cgi?lang=&member=MA08&site=ctc&address=&city=&state=MA&zipcode=&plusfour="]Rep. Mike Capuano[/URL] (D-MA), [URL="http://www.visi.com/juan/congress/cgi-bin/newmemberbio.cgi?lang=&member=MA07&site=ctc&address=&city=&state=MA&zipcode=&plusfour="]Rep. Ed Markey[/URL] (D-MA), [URL="http://www.visi.com/juan/congress/cgi-bin/newmemberbio.cgi?lang=&member=MA03&site=ctc&address=&city=&state=MA&zipcode=&plusfour="]Rep. Jim McGovern[/URL] (D-MA), Rep. Steve Pearce (R-NM), [URL="http://www.visi.com/juan/congress/cgi-bin/newmemberbio.cgi?lang=&member=MAJR&site=ctc&address=&city=&state=MA&zipcode=&plusfour="]Sen. John Kerry[/URL] (D-MA), [URL="http://www.visi.com/juan/congress/cgi-bin/newmemberbio.cgi?lang=&member=MASR&site=ctc&address=&city=&state=MA&zipcode=&plusfour="]Sen. Ted Kennedy[/URL] (D-MA), [URL="http://www.visi.com/juan/congress/cgi-bin/newmemberbio.cgi?lang=&member=NMSR&site=ctc&address=&city=&state=NM&zipcode=&plusfour="]Sen. Pete Dominici[/URL] (R-NM,) and [URL="http://www.visi.com/juan/congress/cgi-bin/newmemberbio.cgi?lang=&member=NMJR&site=ctc&address=&city=&state=NM&zipcode=&plusfour="]Sen. Jeff Bingaman[/URL] (D-NM), [URL="http://www.visi.com/juan/congress/cgi-bin/newmemberbio.cgi?lang=&member=NJ08&site=ctc&address=&city=&state=NJ&zipcode=&plusfour="]Rep. Bill Pascrell[/URL] (D-NJ), [URL="http://www.visi.com/juan/congress/cgi-bin/newmemberbio.cgi?lang=&member=NJSR&site=ctc&address=&city=&state=NJ&zipcode=&plusfour="]Sen. Frank Lautenberg[/URL] (D- NJ), [URL="http://www.visi.com/juan/congress/cgi-bin/newmemberbio.cgi?lang=&member=NJJR&site=ctc&address=&city=&state=NJ&zipcode=&plusfour="]Sen. Robert Menendez[/URL] (D- NJ), [URL="http://www.visi.com/juan/congress/cgi-bin/newmemberbio.cgi?lang=&member=NC02&site=ctc&address=&city=&state=NC&zipcode=&plusfour="]Rep. Bob Etheridge[/URL] (D-NC)


Recent reports of starvation:
Drought and Hunger Kill Nine People in Northern Afghanistan (RAWA)
http://www.rawa.org/temp/runews/2008/05/25/drought-and-...fghanistan_8494.html

"I sold my daughter to feed the rest of my family" (UN News Office)
http://www.irinnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportId=78276

Food shortages cause grass eating, displacement
http://www.irinnews.org/report.aspx?ReportID=77195

Food crisis leaves many Afghans desperate May 2008
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/24422672/

Sept. 2007, Kandahar Province, video
http://youtube.com/watch?v=wc6vfqdaRK8
[URL="http://youtube.com/watch?v=wc6vfqdaRK8"] [/URL]

related thread:
http://www.militarytimes.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1565352
------------------
Letter to the US Congress Regarding The New Afghan Marshall Plan in
Support of Operation Enduring Freedom.

Dear Congressman,

I am writing to you in order to request that you co-sponsor the
legislation outlined below in support of the goals of the advocacy
group Jobs for Afghans http://jobsforafghans.org. Jobs for Afghans
represents citizens of the United States, many with family members
serving in with the US military in Afghanistan, who are dismayed that
the neglect of economic conditions in Afghanistan now threatens the
hard-won victory by our troops in 2001, with the overthrow of the
Taliban. A 40% unemployment rate is driving young men into the arms
of an insurgency which has never been popular, but which pays wages of
$8 per day to those who join it, to men who often wish only to feed
their families. it is shameful that the most powerful economy in the
world, America's, cannot manage to properly implement a reconstruction
which is but a fraction of the size, in today's dollars, of the bold
and successful Marshall Plan which secured allied gains in Europe
after World War II. It is a shame that, for about one-tenth of the
yearly cost of the US military occupation, such reconstruction and
job-creation would be adequately financed, and the war won in short
order so that our troops can come home.

Please see our complete mission statement at http://jobsforafghans.org
I ask that you co-sponsor the legislation outlined below:

Inserted into SEC. 105a in HR 2446, link at
http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/t2GPO/http://frwebgate.ac...d=f:h2446rfs.txt.pdf

[NEW LANGUAGE IN CAPS]

"(a) In general.—The President shall establish and implement a system
to monitor and evaluate the effectiveness and efficiency of assistance
provided under this title on a program-by-program basis in order to
maximize the long-term sustainable development impact of such
assistance.

1)THIS SYSTEM WILL INCLUDE A MANDATE FOR CONTRACTORS TO HIRE LOCAL
AFGHAN UNSKILLED LABOR WHENEVER POSSIBLE IN ANY PROJECT, AT A MINIMUM
WAGE OF $10 PER DAY. CONTRACTORS WILL BE REQUIRED TO REPORT, FOR EACH
PROJECT, HOW MUCH EMPLOYMENT WAS CREATED IN TERMS OF FULL-TIME
EQUIVALENTS PER DONOR DOLLAR, AND WILL BE REQUIRED TO CERTIFY THAT
LOCAL LABOR WAS USED WHENEVER TECHNOLOGY ALLOWED.

2) CREATION OF AN OVERSIGHT OFFICE IN AFGHANISTAN, POSITIONS BE FILLED
BY NOMINATION BY MEMBERS OF THE AFGHAN STUDY GROUP. THE OFFICE WOULD
HIRE FIVE U.S. DONOR AID EFFECTIVENESS INSPECTORS, REPORTING TO A
REPRESENTATIVE OF THE GENERAL ACCOUNTING OFFICE, WHOSE FUNCTIONS
WOULD BE AS FOLLOWS:

A) TO INSURE THAT LARGE NUMBERS OF TEN DOLLAR PER DAY JOBS ARE
CREATED WHICH BUILD AFGHANISTAN'S INFRASTRUCTURE. THE LEVEL OF
INVESTMENT PER YEAR WOULD EQUAL THE AMOUNT REQUIRED TO ADDRESS
AFGHANISTAN'S 40 PERCENT UNEMPLOYMENT LEVEL, THESE UNSKILLED LABOR
JOBS SHALL BE EXCLUSIVELY FOR AFGHAN CITIZENS.

B) TO INSURE A HIGH RATE OF LABOR FOR CAPITAL SUBSTITUTION, WHEREVER
TECHNOLOGICALLY FEASIBLE.

C) TO INSURE THE USE OF LOCAL COMPANIES WHEN POSSIBLE, AND WHERE SKILL
SETS ARE LACKING, TO SET OF CAP OF FOREIGN CONTRACTOR AND
SUBCONTRACTOR PROFITS AND FEES RECYCLING BACK OUT OF THE COUNTRY TO
20%, RATHER THAN THE CURRENT 40%(SEE THE ACBAR REPORT LINKED AT
HTTP://JOBSFORAFGHANS.ORG )

D) TO REPORT PROGRESS ON THE PRIORITIZATION OF THE ELECTRICITY,
WATER, SEWAGE, HEALTH INFRASTRUCTURE

E) TO REPORT ON PROGRESS IN EXTENDING THE PIPES OF INFRASTRUCTURE,
AS UNDERSTOOD WITHIN THE PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT COMMUNITY TO CONSIST
OF WATER, SEWAGE, ELECTRICITY, AND TELECOMMUNICATIONS INFRASTRUCTURE.

F) TO ORDER, FROM A SPECIAL ACCOUNT TO BE SET UP BY CONGRESS, BASIC
MEDICINES AND MEDICAL SUPPLIES TO BE SUPPLIED TO AFGHAN HOSPITALS AND
CLINICS FREE. BACK UP POWER GENERATORS SHALL BE ALSO BE SUPPLIED TO
HOSPITALS FREE OF CHARGE.

-----------
Legislative strategy we leave to the sponsoring congressmen. Whether
SEC. 105a in HR 2446 is the best place for language to appear in order
to govern regulations at USAID, the principle donor agency, is the
job of the co-sponsors to decide.

Finally please co-sponsor and the lead to passage an emergency
release of food aid into the Afghanistan, in the amount of $1 billion,
to be passed as a separate measure in order to facilitate and separate
from any debate the congress may require for the more complex
legislation. Afghans are literally starving, which is shameful in a
country which we the United States occupy and for which we bear
responsibility.

Sources of starvation reports:
Drought and Hunger Kill Nine People in Northern Afghanistan (RAWA)
http://www.rawa.org/temp/runews/2008/05/25/drought-and-...fghanistan_8494.html

"I sold my daughter to feed the rest of my family" (UN News Office)
http://www.irinnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportId=78276

Food shortages cause grass eating, displacement
http://www.irinnews.org/report.aspx?ReportID=77195

Food crisis leaves many Afghans desperate May 2008
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/24422672/

Sept. 2007, Kandahar Province, video
http://youtube.com/watch?v=wc6vfqdaRK8

Thank you congressman for your attention to this matter. I and Jobs
for Afghans looks forward to working with you in order to speedily
pass all the above legislation, in order to avert the catastrophe of
the US losing a war for which we have had full international support,
in which we still enjoy the support of the population, and which we
had initially decisively won.

Sincerely,
(district constituent representing Jobs for Afghans, other signatories)
http://jobsforafghans..org