The Enron-isation of Afghanistan

William Fisher
Inter Press Service

As with the demise of Enron, the future of Afghanistan is one in which the ‘get rich quick’ class at the top will escape with their bounty, while the poor who were encouraged to invest heavily in ‘reconstruction’ and promised prosperity will be left to live in the rubble.”

NEW YORK, May 3 (IPS) - “Contractors in Afghanistan are making big money for bad work” — that is the conclusion reached in a new report from CorpWatch written by an Afghan-American journalist who returned to her native country to examine the progress of reconstruction.

“The [George W.] Bush administration touts the reconstruction effort in Afghanistan as a success story,” the report says, but claims that reconstruction has been “bungled” by “many of the same politically connected corporations which are doing similar work in Iraq”, receiving “massive open-ended contracts” without competitive bidding or with limited competition.

“These companies are pocketing millions, and leaving behind a people increasingly frustrated and angry with the results,” the report says. Foreign contractors “make as much as 1,000 dollars a day, while the Afghans they employ make 5 dollars per day,” the report charges.

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