Stymied in quest to bolster small businesses in Iraq

[Barrett808]

Source: Los Angeles Times

Stymied in quest to bolster small businesses in Iraq
An American consultant spends a frustrating year in Baghdad trying to set up a development center.
By Cyndia Zwahlen, Special to The Times
April 7, 2008

Southern California small-business consultant Phil Borden went to Iraq with high hopes for playing a small part in rebuilding the tattered economy.

The yearlong venture shredded that dream.

Charged with taking over a failed effort by a State Department contractor to create a national model of a profitable small-business development center, Borden expected to use his considerable stateside experience helping entrepreneurs. But the deaths of co-workers, locals and American soldiers -- and the continuing absurdities of trying to do business in a war zone -- took their toll.

"I learned that meaning well and doing well are two different things," said Borden, a Palos Verdes resident, whose role was confirmed for The Times by colleagues in Iraq and at the State Department.

...

"I began my year in Baghdad's Red Zone wrapped in a flak jacket, Kevlar under-shorts and hope that I could create a small beachhead for economic sanity in an ocean of madness. . . . Over time, I increasingly came to understand that I had deluded myself."

Read more: http://q13.trb.com/news/la-fi-smallbiz7apr07,0,6459118.story

[liberal N proud]

1. Could it be all those bombs exploding every day?

I just don't know what keeps people from wanting to open shops and risk their lives to sell things to other people risking their lives to buy them.


Just don't know

:sarcasm:

[sutz12]

2. That and the fact that the neo-con agenda...

doesn't really give a shit about small businesses. They just get in the way.

:shrug: