Analysis

After pouring billions of dollars into rebuilding energy systems in Iraq, Lebanon, Libya, and Yemen. U.S. and international donors have frustratingly little to show for the effort. In a new report, Will Todman investigates what went wrong and charts a better path forward.  

In June 2023, a woman waited for the last customer to leave a grocery store in La Marsa, in northeastern Tunisia. She mumbled to the shopkeeper, “Do you have it?” The shopkeeper took her to a back room and handed her a small packet wrapped in a dark bag. Once she got home, she opened the bag and showed it to her husband. She had managed to secure a bag of coffee. Just a month earlier, she had to go through the same process to get butter, and prior to that, to obtain rice