ARTICLE: “8 Months After Quake, Little Relief for Some Pakistanis: ‘We are sitting here and counting on God,’ says a father of six,” by Carlotta Gall, New York Times, 21 June 2006. p. A3.

ARTICLE: “’Breathtaking’ Waste and Fraud in Hurricane Aid,” by Eric Lipton, New York Times, 27 June 2006, p. A1.

Eight months past the Pakistani temblor that kills 73k and leaves 3 million homeless in a nation of 170 million (the equivalent in America would be 5 million) and so many “families here still swelter in tents waiting for a government compensation plan to kick in so they can start to rebuild.”

Hmmm. Where have I heard these complaints before?

The Pakistani army is credited with averting widespread hunger and disease and providing emergency shelter to tens of thousands, but then the ball is essentially dropped by the government and--by extension--the international relief community (which is obviously limited by the local government’s low-capacity in the matter and the choices it makes).

So we see the usual pattern in Pakistan that we see in so many other places: big splashy effort by military in immediate aftermath which does much good in limiting damage, followed closely by huge outpouring of private giving along with usual scrimpy public giving, followed by all sorts of grand statements about rebuilding and meeting the needs of the people, followed by a lot of inactivity, waste fraud and abuse, delay, and then sad stories 6-to-12 months later about how people are still suffering the effects of the disaster as though the follow-up was essentially a grand illusion.

And where does all that money go?

Typically, no one knows. But one assumes most is lost to graft, theft and corruption.

David Petraeus told me that he constantly ran into the “man in the moon” problem in Iraq during his years there trying to rebuild: Iraqis would say, “America can put a man on the moon” but it can’t do X in Iraq! Why is that so?”

But the truth is, we can’t put the man on the moon here in the States, as New Orleans has shown.

Can you believe that after 9/11 and all the other hurricanes we’ve had that both FEMA and the American Red Cross have to cry “uncle” and admit they were basically unprepared and overwhelmed by Katrina?

So $2 billion just disappears.

Why is a concept like Development-in-a-Box so compelling and timely?

How can it not be, given our track record at home and abroad?

Sar-Box said that there is a new minimum standard for operating a public business in the U.S. Either meet it or get bought, go bankrupt/out of business or go private. The Bush Doctrine said similar things about the international security environment: new standard that you either meet or your choices are play rogue, go failed or get invaded.

These new rule sets are all about setting new minimum standards and pushing players to best practices. No such minimum rule set yet exists on development and especially so on the subject of post-disaster/conflict recovery.

How can we hope to get good on long-term rehab when our emergency room procedures are so inadequate--again, both at home and abroad?