There's been lots said, correctly, about rampant corruption in th government of Afghan President Hamid Karzai.

But corruption amongst contractors, both international and Afghan subcontractors, is also rampant.

The concrete hut in this photo was built as a headquarters for the local village protection forces, known as AP3, that patrol roads in Wardak province. Wardak officials told me the contract was let to a local contractor by the US Special Forces team that was training the AP3. No doubt the Special Forces were in a hurry to get the thing built and weren't concerned with supervising the details.

This tiny hut has no water, no electricity, and no latrine. It does have a fence around it built with local stones. The cost, according to the head of Wardak's Provincial Council, who says he saw the contract: $105,000. And four of these headquarters were built. Locals that I spoke were disgusted with the waste of money, not to mention the shoddy building, and said a better headquarters could have been built for $5-10,000.

Think what $400,000 well spent could have accomplished in a strategically important province that lacks roads, electricity, good irrigation systems, cold storage for its fruit growers, and jobs.

In my column today I write about the Voice of Women Organization in Herat, Afghanistan, which runs shelters for abused women, helps women in prison, and runs workshops to help sensitize men to respect women more in accordance with Islamic values.

The staff of VWO are all remarkable. On the left is founder Suraya Pakzad., whom I profile today. To her right is Safia, who - under the Taliban - managed to keep working with her husband for an NGO that gave small loans to couples; she road on a motorcyle to distribute that aid.  Malika, to her right, fled with her family to Iran to escape the Taliban. Wahida, to her right, could no longer study under Taliban rules, until she learned that nurses' training was permitted and enrolled in a a course. Now all work as professionls for VWO, and are hoping the Taliban won't make a comeback.

The woman on the far right doesn't have to worry about such things, since she lives in Philadelpha. 

   Anyone who was in Iraq in the worst days finds Kabul incredibly relaxed and peaceful. True, there are more checkpoints and roadblocks than when I was there in May, and more concrete barriers near NATO headquarters where a bomb went off recently.

   About 600 UN workers were evacuated this week after suicide bombers invaded a UN guesthouse a few days ago killing five foreign UN workers and 3 locals.

   My guesthouse now has armed guards on the roof, more sandbags in front, and more guards shooing away any car that tries to park nearby. A jumpy UN worker ran out last night in her pajamas when she heard a boom of indeterminate origin. I didn’t hear it.

   However, the real fear in Kabul right now is of swine flu. All the immigration officers at the airport are masked against dangerous foreigners. Schools and universities have been shut for three weeks.

Mothers in burkas shepherd masked children, and men – for the first time? – are covering their faces with masks. Women in burkas are already protected,.  

     The Norwegian Nobel committee has done President Obama no favor by awarding him the 2009 Peace Prize.

     The committee clearly bestowed the prize for Obama’s intentions, not his achievements - since nominations were closed on Feb. 1, 2009, 12 days after he took office. At bottom this was an effort to boost Obama’s efforts to promote “a new climate in international politics” and to abandon the unilateralism that characterized the presidency of George W. Bush. The award openly aims at encouraging Obama to live up to his campaign promises to pursue diplomacy and dialogue and a world without nuclear weapons.

      Yet nothing more clearly demonstrates the gap between Nobel committee hopes and on-the-ground reality than the fact that the prize was announced on a day when Obama was holding high level White House talks about future strategy in Afghanistan.

       Obama may seek dialogue, and may even encourage Afghan reconciliation talks with low and medium level Taliban. However, senior Taliban leaders and Al Qaeda aren’t interested in bargaining. They are interested in taking over Afghanistan, setting up an Islamic emirate, and using it to destabilize Pakistan and get their hands on nuclear weapons.

        The Peace Prize may enhance Obama’s appeal to rational actors in the international community who want to play by global rules. But those whose minds are focused solely on narrow national goals, like Russia’s Vladimir Putin, have little interest in behaving like good global citizens. Those gripped by ideology, such as al-Qaeda and the Iranian regime, have little interest in multilateral institutions. They want to create their own rules. 

         The Nobel Award won’t make the Israelis and Palestinians more willing to compromise, nor will it make Indians and Pakistanis more likely to settle differences over Kashmir. Nor will it overcome U.S. domestic political squabbles over the economic costs of combating global warming.

          It will symbolize global aspirations that President Obama can’t meet, for reasons that often lie beyond his control, and reflect the mess he inherited from his predecessor.

         At best the Nobel will burnish Obama’s aura abroad and may help him on the margins; at worst, it will serve as an awkward reminder that the world’s inherent violence and imperfections aren’t always susceptible to dialogue, even though it’s worth trying..  Despite admirable intentions, Obama has to operate in the real world.

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        Read more of my comments on Obama's Nobel Peace Prize in my column on Sunday at go.philly.com/trudyrubin

     I can't believe he did it.

     I can't believe President Obama, who understands the new world in which we live, made the gaffe of going to Denmark - to pitch a Chicago Olympics bid that we were bound to lose. No one should have been surprised that Chicago only got 18 votes and was knocked out in the first round.

     I argued against the idea of Obama's going to Denmark with colleagues, who were all convinced it was the right move. After all, other heads of state were going. But any finger on the global pulse made clear that this was not the year for an American bid, irrespective of Obama's international shine.

     Think about it. One: The last time the United States got the nod, in Salt Lake City, there was a scandal involved that compelled the IOCC to change its entire system of choosing winners. Why would the IOCC want to summon up memories of those last, misbegotten U.S. games?

     Two: in a globalized world, a rising power like Brazil - which also has a superstar leader named Lula - was a far more attractive choice than a hyperpower whose gloss was tarnished by the economic crisis. Three: in a globalized world, where South America has never hosted an Olympics (and the United States has done so many times) Rio was the obvious choice. 

      Four: there was no good reason for Obama to be promoting a US venue at a time of economic downturn. Who needs the Olympics anyway?  We've been there, done that. And almost every city that gets the nod winds up losing money.  Obama himself said two weeks ago he had no time to go to Denmark because he had more important things to do - like work on health care or his Afghan strategy. He was right. 

      The president let good judgment be swayed by his Chicago friends, such as advisor Valerie Jarrett, and they put him in the embarrassing position of pitching a product that couldn't be sold. They risked tarnishing his international image as a leader whom much of the world admires, an image that is one of his key strengths. For what? So Chicago could go broke?

      Message to Obama: tell your friends to keep their ideas to themselves in the future. And keep your eye on the ball.  

The live blog will begin at noon Friday.

Here are some more details about Prime Minister Maliki's new Education Iniative, announced on July 25, 2009, that I believe exemplifies the kind of relationship we need to shape with Iraq in the future.

Iraq will be working with AED,  a nonprofit educational consulting firm  in the United States, that works on global education and other social issues, to set up the project. The initiative will send up to 10,000 Iraqi students per year over the next five years to the United States, United Kingdom, Canada, and Australia to complete their higher education studies.  

The Initiative, created, funded, and managed by Iraq, is designed to mitigate four decades of underdevelopment due to wars and the economic stagnation of the last two decades.  

“We are celebrating the desire of the Iraqis to continue to seek their education [with this initiative],” said Prime Minister al-Maliki, at the announcement of the initiative, which took place at AED's offices.  “Our universities were known for being the most advanced universities in the world, but because of…all that we have gone through…we have lost what we had before.”

Students will be allowed to study nearly all majors and seek all degrees, including some PhDs.   Iraqi students will be especially encouraged to study engineering, education, information technology, business, law and medicine.  All scholarship recipients will be expected to return to Iraq after they complete their overseas programs.

The second phase of the Initiative, expected to start next year, will focus on the rejuvenation of the Iraqi education system from K-12 as well as spotlight higher education reform.

Twenty-two universities, which are founding members of the American Universities Iraq Consortium, will be welcoming these students to their campuses.  
Among these universities are Vanderbilt University, Virginia Commonwealth University, West Virginia University, and Texas A & M.  The University System of Ohio will also admit students per an MOU signed at the July 25 ceremony by Dr. Humadi and Eric D. Fingerhut, Chancellor of the Ohio Board of Regents. The intent of the Consortium is to streamline the admissions process for qualified Iraqi students. More universities are expected to join the Consortium.

The Initiative has the support of the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad and the U.S. Department of State.

Marefat school students

   The National Constitution Center has just received a grant of $105,000 from the American Association of Museums for a civic photography program that will link high school students from Philly with minority students in Kabul.

    Students from Constitution High School in Philly, where a mostly minority student body focuses on the role of citizens in a democracy, will pair with students from the Marefat High School in Kabul, whose students are members of the Shiite Hazara minority.  They will exchange ideas and photos that portray how they, as minority students, define their role as citizens in their respective countries. The photos will be ultimately used in a joint exhibition to be hosted at the National Constitution center and the National Museum of Afghanistan.

    I visited the Marefat school when I was in Afghanistan in April, and met the students who will take part in the program. Some of them are shown in the photo above. They may look a bit stiff (they aren't used to being photographed) but they broke up in giggles once the camera was off them. And they all spoke in English, with different degrees of fluency, about what the program means to them.

     Having grown up during war and an unsettled postwar, they are just figuring out what citizenship means in their country. The school's terrific founder and director, Aziz Royesh, who has thought deeply on this subject is trying to explain to them the meaning of civic rights - and responsibilities.

    I will write about my meeting with Royesh and the Afghan students in my column on Wednesday.  

     Why did the U.S. military choose last Friday as the date to free five Iranian "diplomats" whom the United States arrested in Irbil, Iraq in January 2007?

     The U.S. military had accused the men of being members of the elite al Quds force of the Revolutionary Guards; al Quds members have armed and trained radical Shiite militias in Iraq.  The Iraqi government, which has close ties to Iran, has been pressing for the release of the men since they were arrested.  

      But why let them go now, in Baghdad, just a day after an Iranian-American academic, Kian Tajbakhsh,  was arrested in Tehran - apparently by the Revolutionary Guards? The Guards have been the military muscle used by the Iranian regime to crack down on post-election protests. 

    They take a hardline position on foreign policy. As I wrote in my column of July 8, the head of the al Quds force, Gen. Suleimani, sent a message to Gen. David Petraeus last year saying that the Quds force controlled Iran's foreign policy on Iraq, Afghanistan, Lebanon and Gaza. On my last trip to Iran, in summer 2006, one senior Revolutionary Guards officials told me: "You need us more than we need you."

     So, was the release of the Irbil Five meant to signal the Al Quds Force and its parent body, the Rev Guards, that the Obama administration wants to deal? If that was the intent, why let them go at a time when there are no signals that the Guards are interested in compromises with the United States.

      I called Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari in Baghdad and asked him what was going on. His reply: "there was no deal. This release has been in the populine. It was part of the status of forces agreement (SOFA) we signed with Washington (last November) that said the United States would hand over all detainees to Iraq; they were included in the handover. The Americans are done with them and it is up to the Iraqi government to decide their fate." (Iraq has already released the men to the Iranian ambassador in Baghdad.)

       But the SOFA, which runs until the end of 2011,  did not specify when the men should be freed.