

Please stop building schools in Iraq and Afghanistan - robg
http://mattsteinglass.wordpress.com/2009/05/12/please-stop-building-schools-in-iraq-and-afghanistan/

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rdl
I've been in Iraq and Afghanistan since 2003.

There are a lot of issues with the way aid is distributed. The most successful
parts of both places, the wireless networks and decentralized power systems,
have been totally market driven, and actually hindered more by centralized
efforts and regulation than helped.

Somalia, where it is too dangerous and chaotic for aid agencies or telco
regulators to operate, has cheaper Internet access and mobile calling than
almost anywhere else in Africa or the developing world!

Communications infrastructure (roads, signals/fiber/wireless, electrical grid)
is one of the few areas where scale can be helpful. In Afghanistan there is a
lot of money coming through the military to pay for a road network (with
benefits to both the foreign militaries and the local economy; dual use
technology at its best). Communications is basically wireless backed by
satcom, with some microwave backbone and upcoming fiber, with microwave/fiber
driven by military and government customers paying top dollar, then going out
to connect up the cell systems. For $20/mo you can buy 3G service.

One of the biggest issues in Afghanistan is that aside from the US Military,
the other US funding agencies (primary US AID) have to operate through local
contractors, and a rather inefficient process which leads to overpaying for
everything, and thus not accomplishing enough concentrated change to be
successful. The "Provincial Reconstruction Teams" are afraid to go out except
with a huge military presence, and are pretty sheltered from everything,
whereas I was riding around in an old pickup truck with a 9mm and no problems.

Irrigation systems are probably the next thing to do after roads (the military
has roads under control); these can be done for $5-12k each by local labor,
and 20-30 systems per district, all in parallel -- or, you can pay $500k via
US AID and get 1-2 systems done after 2 years. The US AID requirement to use
local contractors is "trickle down economics" -- basically the hope is that
paying an Afghan with political connections $500k to do work will lead to
$500k staying in the local economy, paid in wages to other Afghan laborers,
etc. It turns out it turns into the connected Afghan spending the same $5-10k
to get the project done, and then buying $490k in real estate in Dubai or
Canada.

Government and government contracting is the opposite of the startup world in
every way. Very few people seem to have done both.

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gaius
That's a bit of a silly comment on the page. Halliburton, Sodexho, Serco (et
al) schtick _is_ services. They would happily train teachers if that was what
the government paid them taxpayer's money to do.

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devhen
That was my comment and as soon as I posted it I realized my mistake of not
mentioning that the military/industrial complex _typically_ doesn't make money
off of training teachers or the like. It is much more common and easier for
them to build buildings and reap the financial rewards that way. In a perfect
world; if our tax dollars are going toward rebuilding a country; they would be
used for "services" like training teachers and other things that would truly
benefit the area in the long run. Unfortunately the current system is setup
for money laundering and profit so my hope is slim that real progress will be
made in these areas.

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showerst
_edit_ Just read the original post, and the poster there makes much better
points, basically noting that Aid can't be divorced from the overall security
plan, or it will be wasted. Restating this as "Don't build schools in Iraq"
is, IMHO misleading link bait.

Two points in opposition to this,

#1: Most charities and NGO's that build schools also include yearly stipends
to fund teachers and supplies. I don't have a cite for this with me, I'll
track down a reliable source later to be sure. I know for instance that Greg
Mortenson's does. Most also do independent audits every few years.

#2: In many of the most isolated areas, even if they 'know how to build
buildings', local custom requires gender segregation, and building a girls'
school isn't a budget priority, but if someone else pays for it, families will
gladly send their children to school. Some areas of rural Afghanistan and
Pakistan have had skyrocketing rates of female education once additional
schools were built.

As with any foreign aid, throwing money at the problem isn't the answer (and
lucrative large-scale construction projects rarely are either), it's how the
aid is deployed and used. The most effective aid organizations are almost
without fail also the ones that require the most accountability from
recipients.

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lutorm
A nice read about this is "Three cups of tea".

There's a passage in there that goes something like "Thank you, Dr. Greg, for
offering to help us build a school. We talked about it and before we build the
school, we decided we need to build a bridge." So they built the bridge
instead...

~~~
curtis
It's important to remember that after building the bridge, they then built the
school. In fact, Greg Mortenson's organization (The Central Asia Institute)
has built dozens of schools since then. It's been a while since I read the
book, but as I recall, in that particular village, they had at least one
teacher, but the children had to study outside until the school building was
completed. (I also recommend "Three Cups of Tea". It's not as well written as,
say, Tracy Kidder's "Mountains Beyond Mountains", but it doesn't matter, the
story pretty much tells itself.)

~~~
mnemonicsloth
_not as well written as, say, Tracy Kidder's "Mountains Beyond Mountains"..._

This is the second time I've seen Kidder's work mentioned here in the last few
days [1]. I've read and enjoyed _Soul of a New Machine_. Would you recommend
any of his other books?

[1] <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=601903>

~~~
curtis
_Mountains Beyond Mountains_ is the only other Kidder book I've read. It's
certainly worth a read, but it's a really different book from _Soul of a New
Machine_ , just by subject matter if nothing else.

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eugenejen
I can't help but feel this is a very broad pattern that happens all the time.

"Hardware is always easy to built. Software is always hard to written except
trivial case. Wetware is always expensive just for a competent one."

~~~
foulmouthboy
We see that in analytics all the time.

"The numbers are being collected, why would I need somebody to analyze them?"

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Allocator2008
I think the question to be asked, is the question of if it is in the self-
interest of the American taxpayer to subsidize schools in Iraq and
Afghanistan. Now, this is hard to answer. On one hand, it is unclear how more
schools in these countries serve our national interest. On the other hand,
without education, young people are more privy to fall into the brainwashing
of terrorists. So one could make the argument that if one spends on education,
that enhances national security by having more educated people in these
unstable countries and therefore fewer people who are possible recruits for
terrorists. I guess it is all in the way one does it, if one builds schools
with good oversight (i.e. overseen by the coalition and Iraqi/Afghan
governments) then one could perhaps justify that. However, if there is no
oversight, then who knows what kind of stuff might end up getting taught
there. We obviously don't want to spend our tax dollars building schools only
so that religious extremists can teach in them. The same is true incidentally
in the United States. Government vouchers for private schools are wrong,
because these private schools often teach nonsense like Intelligent Design,
which to my mind is the Ultimate-747-In-The-Junkyard-As-Designer theory and
merits no serious consideration, let alone our tax dollars. So if there is a
self-interest in our national security in helping with education in Iraq and
Afghanistan that may be justifiable, provided there is strict oversight, and
if there is no oversight then it is a no go. Similar to how education here at
home should not have tax dollars going to private religious agendas. Ideally
of course I think states, and not the federal government, should handle
education, since this is an issue of federalism, but that is another issue
than the present discussion.

