Roads to Nowhere: Program to Win Over Afghans Fails

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Wall Street Journal, 10 February 2012
Dion Nissenbaum reports on the USAID, IRD-implemented campaign to build 1200 miles of road in insurgency-affected areas. A long list of the many things that can go wrong when you start using ‘aid as a weapons system’, including immense wastage, silly projects (think ‘flower literacy’), violence, local conflict, abandoned projects, and aid officials who continue to defend the program.