You don't need to go to Afghanistan to find this sort of thing happening, you only need to go to northern Australia to an Aboriginal community where a project has been foisted on a local tribe by a well meaning, but often rather patronising group of do gooders.

David

Quite an expose.

Though on the flipside I suspect that the majority of Afghani's see the expats as the latest batch of occupiers (previously Indians, British and Russians etc) taking up temporary residence.

While the West is attempting to spread democracy through military means the West is also trying it through aid and straight bribes. Afghanis inturn would see expats, their governments and the UN as sources of money and power to be milked as quickly as possible before the West leaves and something else takes over.

That something else will definitly consist of chaos, Pakistani influence and Taliban but perhaps also Chinese and Russian influence.

Pete
see http://gentleseas.blogspot.com/2010/06/afghanistan-differing-indian-and.html

An Expatriate: (Quote).

…“Skilled professionals working in another country are described as expatriates, whereas a manual labourer who has moved to another country to earn more money might be labeled an 'immigrant”;

…Interestingly, Wikipedias (partial) description of an “Expatriate” above, describes a social-divide which does explain the arrogance of the well-known expatriate attitude and behavior mistakenly confined in description, as applied only to Afghanistan in this article.

VK3AUU… hits on the extended broadness of the arrogance and control described in this article, with his/her observations of life in the top end Aboriginal communities of Australia; and is right on the mark. The Expatriates are “Caesars cronies”, and were successfully employed to kill Aboriginal initiative following the elimination of the successful ATSIC and the CDEP by the Howard Government.

…Both organizations were seen to be too controlled by the Aboriginal people themselves, being first conveniently tarnished by the brush of corruption, used so successfully in Afghanistan, as the excuse for excluding the local population from forming their own directions in development of their local communities and direction of their Countries development.

So;… Expatriate = Racist = Control:

Most honest article I have read in an age. Excellent work Revelly Robinson. Every word of it.

Excellent comments, with excellent examples VK3AUU, plantagenet, diver dan.

We are on the same page and we need more articles like this to open this issue up across the board.

Thank You Revelly Robinson. Please don't stop writing.

'Where the evidence counts' the light shines.

http://www.miacat.com/

might be getting cynical in my old age, but I feel that there are too many people out in these sort of places, just intent on seeing how much money they can extract from the aid dollars, rather than doing what they can to make a real difference to the miserable lives of the locals. That doesn't just apply to the expatriates either, some of the locals are experts at the bribery and corruption routine too.

David

What people need to look at the peace, justice and democracy Operation Iraq Liberation, brought to Iraq. Is there an Iraqi or Afghan alive that wishes their liberators well? I'm sure there are many that wouldn't geld any American they got in their hands, especially if they could sell them for ransom. I saw the same thing when I was in Vietnam. Imperialists never learn how to govern. The only reason, they're still running my country America is a 24/7 propaganda effort.