World View: Corruption has blighted the torrent of dollars poured into the country by America since 2001 An Afghan acquaintance who had worked for the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) told me several years ago how an Afghan subcontractor had made a large profit from a contract to build and get running a tractor repair shop in Uruzgan province in southern Afghanistan. Uruzgan, the home province of Mullah Omar, the leader of the Taliban, was then a particularly dangerous place, but the subcontractor cunningly turned this to his advantage. The strong Taliban presence in the area meant that … Continue reading Al-Qai’da aid project shows the way in Afghanistan