Thread by @AzmatZahra

Throughout America's war in Afghanistan, reporters told story after story of the politicians, contractors, commanders & warlords who filled their pockets with billions meant for the Afghan people.

We've heard the numbers, but what were the true costs to Afghans?

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Many who pilfered the country have now escaped to luxury homes in places like Dubai & London, where they're desperately trying to re-write their histories.

When confronted with evidence of their corruption or wrongdoing, they're telling lies that are easy to fact check.

Some claim they have no ties to a company they founded.

Or pretend they didn't close one & start another under a new name.

That they didn't move business ops to the UAE to hide profits & a paper trail.

But perhaps the most brazen lie is the one they tell themselves...

It is pretending to be oblivious to the impact their corruption and greed had on the ground.

We've heard the tales of millions taken out of the country, but what does that actually look like for ordinary people in Afghanistan?

I want to share just one example from my reporting.

While reporting Ghost Schools, I went to a primary school in Deh-e-Bagh, Kandahar.

Per U.S. records, it was completed years earlier, at cost and up to standard, and would provide a “tangible source of community pride and legitimacy” for local elders and the Afghan government.

What I found was anything but.

Only partially completed, its doors had never opened. There were no latrines, no running water. Without a security wall, the building deteriorated. Windows smashed. Rooms littered with construction materials.

It had never seen a single student.

I tracked down the man who donated the land for the school.

To get the $100,000 contract to build it, the district governor told him to team up with a local firm, Fatay Khan Construction Company (FKCC)

...which just happened to be owned by the district governor’s brother...

Only half the contract had been paid out; FKCC siphoned off the rest, he said.

At his Kandahar City offices decorated w/ornate chandeliers, Fatay Khan flat out denied to me ever having the contract—saying it went to Wali Beradaran Construction, which he had no association with.

What Fatay Khan didn't realize is that even though he'd taken down his website, an archived version of it still existed, and showed Wali Beradaran was a partner company.

It was used to funnel projects so as not to look like they were going to the brother of district governor.

It was an open secret.

I found a U.S. military intelligence assessment that showed the U.S. knew the district governor funneled development projects through his brother to make a profit.

But because he was their "ally" on the ground, everyone looked the other way.

And no one involved in this mess — from the landowner, to the contractor, to the district governor, to the military unit that funded it—seemed to care about who was paying the price:

the village children.

Instead of having classes in the new school, I found about 50 children from Deh-e-Bagh studying outside a cramped mosque across the street, rocking back & forth on the grass, reading Quran.

https://twitter.com/i/status/621354389891084288

The girls only got a religious education from the local mullah.

The little time a visiting UNICEF-funded teacher had for subjects such as math and reading was reserved for the boys.

A mosque assistant walked around the kids with a skinny stick in his hand.

“I just want to scare them,” he told me, waving it in the direction of the children.

“If there is no beating,” one small student responded solemnly, “there is no learning.”

This was the human impact of a single $100,000 contract for a school, but I saw it over & over: buzzfeednews.com/article/azmatk…

Now multiply it by the millions and billions stolen from the country and consider how many Afghans viewed this war and their own government.