No End In Sight

I watched Charles Ferguson's documentary on Iraq "No End in Sight" last night. I woke up today trying to come up with some sort of a light spot in this conflict. I remembered how USAID implemented a "democratization through local action" type of programme in Serbia, and as I has the opportunity to be closely involved in evaluating this programme, I found out that it was modelled by a very successful comunity revitalization programme implemented in Iraq. I read evaluation reports on this Iraq programme, and some of the results were extremely encouraging. So, USAID was doing something remotely successful in Iraq, I'm assuming, if they decided to replicate it in other locations. Even though the programme itself was not too great of a success in Serbia, it made me thing that these missions and the more quiet areas of Iraq, like the north, could be juxtaposed to the chaos of Baghdad and the south, if nothing, at least to provide some hope or a model for making even slight improvements in the country.