Word: corruption
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Many tribal maliks were an easy mark for the militants; many of them were rotten, using government funds allotted for schools, clinics and irrigation canals to line the pockets of their own baggy shalwar kameez trousers. Their sole connection to Islamabad was through the all-powerful and often corrupt political agent, a relic from the British colonial times, who decided which tribal elder should be favored or punished...
...Bush Administration approved $750 million to be spent in the Northwest Frontier Province over the next five years to catapult the poor, lawless region into the 21st century, creating schools and jobs and repairing the battered civil society. But because of fears that there were no safeguards to keep corrupt officials from siphoning off the funds, and because much of the region has been off-limits to aid workers due to militancy, only a tenth of that amount has been spent. Nor can aid wait: the U.N. reckons that over 1.63 million people fled when bullets started flying between...
Those criteria, which the UNDP insists it verifies for each hire, help prevent the program from becoming a political patronage orgy. UNDP officials say the Haitian government has been remarkably cooperative. But Haitians aren't shy about noting how thoroughly corrupt that government is. Many workers openly laud the fact that they don't need to know (or kick back to) a local machine boss to get a cash-for-work spot - "If the government were running this, I probably wouldn't have this job," says Sentelis Doassalit, 30 - and that the pay goes directly to their hands...
...hosts a conference in New York City on March 31 to hash out how best to help Haiti rebuild. Donor governments already know why there was so much less destruction in Chile: it's because the government there forces builders to adhere to rigorous codes, while Haiti's incorrigible corruption and carelessness left such regulation all but nonexistent. On the global corruption index put out by Transparency International, a Berlin-based nonprofit that lists countries from the least to most corrupt, Chile ranks 25th and Haiti 168th. And while Chilean President Michelle Bachelet hit the streets on Saturday reassuring citizens...
Anyone in need of a dose of optimism about Haitians' ability to succeed should look at the Haitian diaspora, Shifter says, "which has proven to be remarkably entrepreneurial and resourceful" in ways it couldn't be under the corrupt, ossified system in their homeland. One of these émigrés is Serge Jean-Louis, a thriving Haitian-American construction contractor in South Florida. "I'm eager to fly back and help rebuild Haiti," he told TIME shortly after the quake. And chances are, he'll surpass Haiti's dismal standards and help rebuild more to the modern specs...