The Sanaa sewer project
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Asked why anybody would partner with the United States, John Kiriakou answered that he did not know, and then told a story about Yemen.

The call on the ambassador

He had been to Yemen five times over the years, he says, starting in 1990 and running through 2011, and every time it was worse than the previous time. But on a visit he dates to around 2000, he paid a call on the Dutch ambassador and the Italian defence attaché.  

They were so proud, he recalls, because their governments had just built a new sewer system and water treatment facility for the capital, Sanaa, and it had taken them, you know, fifteen years. 

Kiriakou's response was a question rather than a compliment: why couldn't we do that? 

The argument it supports

He has always maintained, he says, that if you want to really fight terrorism you do it through economic development, that you develop these economies to the point where the men have jobs and are not interested in making jihad against Americans. For whatever reason, he adds, the European Union countries have that long-term view, and the United States does not.  

The contrast he draws is with what the United States was funding in the same country a decade later, the Yemen jazz radio plan, which lasted about a fortnight. 

The same fifteen-year horizon underlies his criticism of the American budgeting cycle, described in the same conversation: the United States is very much a near-term country, changing presidents every four or eight years and running the whole nation on an annual budget that does not agree with itself from year to year, while assuming that other countries will accept an occasional 'our bad' when something is broken.  

See also

- Yemen Jazz Radio Plan
- Yemen
- Economic roots of terrorism
- Foreign aid
- The al-Qaeda foot soldier
- USAID as a CIA cover vehicle
