Good-faith effort goes bad when Afghan officials take off with donated tru

http://www.estripes.com/article.asp?section=104&article=23802

Lt. Col. Scott McBride was suspicious of Abdul Ghani from the very beginning.

Ghani had been nominated by the governor of southern Afghanistan’s Zabul province to lead a district north of Qalat in an area known as the Kaki-Afghan Valley. In a gathering of regional leaders a few months ago, Ghani stood up alongside the newly selected police chief for the district denouncing the Taliban and swearing allegiance to Hamid Karzai’s central government in Kabul.

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After Ghani’s appointment, McBride’s troops supplied the new district leader and police chief with $100,000, four new Toyota Hilux four-wheel-drive police trucks and four hand-held satellite phones.

The money was to pay the salaries of district policemen as well as to build a school.

It wasn’t long before McBride said he was getting reports that the school was not being built, and the new vehicles were missing.

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Khan said that Ghani had been allowing local Taliban militiamen to use the trucks.