Michael Hughes

Michael Hughes: The latest Afghan reconstruction watchdog report reveals that billions of dollars’ worth of U.S. stabilization programs have failed to, well, stabilize Afghanistan – whatever that word really means. Many of us know that “stabilization” in the context of Western post-invasion state-building endeavors is really code for capitalistic democratization. In fact, many involved have a legitimate deep-seated belief that with democracy comes stability, which, as the real-world case study called Afghanistan shows, is just not true. An audit released a day ahead of the U.S. Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction’s (SIGAR) quarterly report minced no words about the abject failure of USAID stabilization programs. Click here to read more.