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May 2nd, 2012 
FAKE NEWS for the Zionist agenda An Australian-led development team in Afghanistan has been praised for building a school in under 12 months, while a neighbouring US-funded police station project sat unfinished for three years.
The former US commander of Combined Team Oruzgan, Colonel Jim Creighton, said the Australians had created a beautiful school for local children in Tarin Kowt while the US project was a monument to “coalition ineptitude”.
“Compare the police headquarters with the beautiful school next door, where girls were already getting an education,” he said in an article published online by The EastWest Institute thinktank.
“Without many of the roadblocks that the US experienced, the Australian-led Provincial Reconstruction Team (PRT) was able to build their school in under a year.”
Mr Creighton, a 30-year veteran of the US Army and now the EastWest Institute’s chief of staff, said the police station development, a US Corps of Engineers project, was 70 per cent complete when he arrived in Oruzgan in July 2010.
But construction ceased after the Afghan contractors in Kabul and Kandahar stopped work once they got all their money.
Getting the development back on track required raising back pay for security services who minded the site and navigating a multitude of US building regulations transferred to projects in Afghanistan.
Some required US-standard plumbing and electric wiring as well as handrails and wheelchair ramps.
“After 11 frustrating months, and intervention at the flag officer level, the project had barely restarted and was still several months from completion when I departed in June 2011,” Mr Creighton said.
But the Australian team did not face any of these barriers.
“The Australians tracked the progress with regular check-ins and aggressive quality assurance,” he said.
“The US experience with absconding contractors would have been detected quickly.”
Mr Creighton said the US could learn from the Australian effort.
“The US should take the spirit of cooperation in the coalition one step further and learn from the efficient operations of some of our partners,” he said.
The EastWest Institute article was published last month.
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