Strongly disagree. Many of the civil aid organisations are inefficient and particularly when working in concert with the central government, inept and possibly corrupt.
One wonders why the commanding officer and his men did not just use their own local initiative and set up the washing machine on their own authority.
In general, I think I know what you mean and partly agree. I’m not really referring to UN, World Bank or direct civilian government-injected aid (eg. USAID, DFID etc.), which I agree is often ineffective or corrupt or both (though some of the stuff the World Food Program delivers can be effective at times). I’m talking more about small and medium enterprise development, microfinance stuff, private NGOs. Many of these also fail, but a few do work well, which was my original point. Some of these projects can, as it happens, be financed by the USAIDs of this world as well, and with enough delegation down the line to local operators they can sometimes produce good works. The real problem, even with successful outcomes, is to ensure that they remain sustainable over the long-term, since failure is probable after a few years without a critical mass of deeply embedded social/human capital, good property rights and the rule of law (which is what has happened in other countries, especially the former Soviet Union).
Diminishing security since 2007 across much of the country has vastly inflated the cost of civil aid projects. Western countries say that a democratic, prosperous and lawful Afghanistan is the principal objective, in order to deter conditions which promote terrorism, so this would be an argument for more Western investment in civil society programs, supported by increased military intervention in the name of peace-keeping. However, given our stated intentions to withdraw our military forces as soon as we can, a process that will take decades is clearly not likely to be well supported. We will likely be left with the NGOs, a few token government projects and a few quasi-charitable private foreign investors to provide funds and personnel for a few small-scale projects, and nothing much will change.