the egyptian capital cairo. a global screen idol from the era of the great movie epic. and just a reminders now that you can keep up-to-date with all of the news on our website that you can see on your screens there that's at aljazerra.com. best of the best. >> the questions of the future evening as it threatens the try i believe of its past. and questions about rebuilding afghanistan too, billions spent what did the u.s. dollars buy? >> the american says had their own end and goals. with the money they spent to all

those generators and fuel, we could have built. [ inaudible ] twice. ♪ ♪ drank nothank no joining us. welling over $100 billion more than what we paid to get a man to the moon, more than what it costs to rebuild europe after world wore two world war ii and much of the money spent has been a colossal waste. the efforts to stands up a country still vulnerable to the pull of forces lie like the taliban was good intentioned but was it a complete failure. jennifer glasse begins our report with the ice cream man of continues therecontinues there are whose dreams are melting away .

>> reporter: ice cream mogul is obsessedobsessed with keeping things cold. in a dez certificate city with 100-degree summers that's not easy . >> reporter: he eached his ice cream business fore four years arc he wanted to create as many jobs as possible. the timing seemed right. the americans had just built an industrial park with its own power station . the afghans needed elect dress at this but knew diesel was the wrong way to go. it's expensive u and was never sustainable. the americans told kandahar which was a temporary solution.

kandahar was the sea of taliban power. the compound was at the base of this mountain. more than 200 americans have died here since 2001. to insurance it never fell to the taliban again, the big american strategy was to create jobs. and to do that, you needed power power. and while it flowed freely, he was a cool success . his factory worked 24 hours, he employed 300 people, producing 10,000 cartons of ice cream a day. the company was profitable within two years .

but then last year most americans left. and with them, the money that paid for kandahar's power and his dream . >> translator: little by little the electricity got worse. and now we don't have enough. >> reporter: the diesel generators imposed on them by the americans leave business men in a binds. they don't have the kind of money the americans did. >> translator: when americans first came, there was lots of money and people here didn't have money, there were no expectations. then money came and the people had big expectations now there is no money but people still want the same standard of living. >> reporter: the afghan government tries to help by supplying electricity to the park for eight hours a day.

not enough he says, to keep his ice cream cold and his machinery running. for that, he depends on this chief engineer . i ask him what kind of problems he faces. power he says. every problem we have here is because of power. earlier today this production line was making thousands of ice cream cones and ice cream bars when the electricity from the city came on it was i want mit i want and caused some sort of mechanical problem, these gentlemen are trying to fix it so they can get all this working again . electricity spikes mean that software malfunctions being machinery breaks down and, profits melt away . he uses his own generators to keep his business

afloat . since march, fuel has cost him 240,000 u.s. dollars. he's laid off 100 workers, and cut production in half . >> translator: we can only karen i on as long as we can. that means two, three, five months. >> reporter: across town, at yet another diesel power plant built by the americans two years ago, the director of power in kandahar is equally frustrated. rasual says never want third degree facility. now it's not running at all. the u.s. development agency usa i.d. no longer gives him diesel. >> last year they delivered to us

300,000 liters to us. another fuel supplied by. [ inaudible ] by afghanistan. >> reporter: just for this plant? >> for this hadn't. >> reporter: how much do you get now from usad. >> nothing. stopped. only one bunch the fuel came and last year, nearly nine, 10 months ago, we burned, we used and then stopped. nothing, no more. >> reporter: and how much did this plant cost, do you know? >> i don't know. this is from the big people. yeah. i don't know. >> reporter: what is worse is even if the plant worked, it would only provide eight hours of electricity a day. and the fuel to run it costs 10 times what the power company is able to charge for electricity. the best chance for affordable

electricity for kandahar would be harnessing the full phone shall of the dam 21 miles outside the city and one miles away in helmand province . reel supplying power since it was built by the united states at the height of the cold war. it was never finished. a 2,008 coalition mission to move a new 220-ton turbine there killed an estimated 200 people. mostly afghans. as the taliban tried to stop the convoy. what could have been a water shed oven great became a symbol of american failure as the parts rust ed in the sun . the 34 megawatts of power it does generate is only about a

third of what kandahar needs. the taliban take half of that and fighting near the power lines means constant it's disruptions disruptions. and so that leaves us with solar solar. an entrepreneur in solar energy says solar panels are pretty much the only option for many. and even though it's a big business for his new company it's a loss for america. >> translator: what the americans did here wasn't good. everything they did was temporary. not permanent. for example, their solar streetlights were poor quality and only lasted five months .

>> reporter: back at the ice cream factory, he says the united states missed a golden opportunity to help afghanistan. and all he can do now is hope the afghan government can find the power so the half million people in in former taliban heartland can keep the lights on on. >> the americans had their own end and goals and they deceived us. then they skipped town with the money they spent on all of thor generators and fuel, we could have rebuilt the dam twice . the you had spent half a billion dollars to bring electricity to can't there are. this project by all estimates have failed and left the people here with a dim view of the united

states. "america tonight's" sheila macvicar has interviewed the inspector general look in to all of this abuse and found that it's not just confine today these energy issues, it's across the board with u.s. spending in afghanistan. >> it's across every seek sector he's looked at the special inspector general for afghan reconstruction is make sure that the american taxpayers get value for their tax dollars spent. >> it's a colossal amount of money. >> the u.s. spent as much in afghanistan as it spent with europe in the with the plan to rebuild europe after world war ii. it's a huge amount of money by any imagination. >> and spent in all sorts of areas, we were looking at something in jennifer glasse's report is merely defined to the energy sector. this is across the board in rebuilding afghanistan. >> between 300 to $400 million spent on planes for the afghan air force that the afghans neither wanted being couldn't

use and ultimately were destroyed. that's u.s. taxpayer money. across the board, schools, health clinics, even in trying to buildup rule of law in trying to buildup the afghan military there are ghost soldiers, ghost teachers, ghost health workers people on the payroll or should be on the payroll, should be working, but, in fact, aren't. there isn't enough oversight. there are not enough people in the field to go out and see that these thing happen. in part because the security situation is declining. >> this has been going a decade now. how could it be that no one saw this come this afghan said they tried to tell the americans, this is a bad idea. this is a bad way to use the money. how could this have happened? >> there are a couple of answers to that question. one is that the offers of the special inspector general for special afghan reconstruction was not set up until after the

fact. a lot of promises are being made when wajahat no oversight body when the office was set up. congress didn't fund it properly, personnel issues only really in the last two years that this office has taken hold and been able to dig in. but a lot of things that they are looking at are things that happened in the past . it's true every place the special inspector general's people is looking at, they find contracts are awarded and then there is no follow up and no accountability . what the special inspector general says there is no everyone accountability on the part of u.s. personnel in afghanistan charged with responsibly spending u.s. tax payers' money. that because state department officials, uusa i.d. officials and others not rank odd how the contracts perform or what value they given they are ranked on how many millions of dollars in contracts they let.

and then six months later, those people are out of the country. and the ball gets dropped. >> and they have been encouraged to spends the money of the u.s. tax payers and now we see it's gone to waste. >> more than that, we have built the afghans, in the words of johnson co, a government that will cost end them eight to $10 billion a year to maintain afghan stun doesn't have that. the most they will have in any given year is $6 billion. there is an meet shortfall and somewhere along the line either everything begins to fall apart or the u.s. has to continue to support. and, again, there are big issues about where that money is going. >> "america tonight's" sheila macvicar. next what was supposed to be the most valuable u.s. investment in afghanistan's future. and the evidence it turned out to be no better than the worst of the past. later a desperate effort to save a priceless part of afghanistan's past.

and why it's quickly running out of time. and hot on "america tonight's" website now, gambling on the future of atlantic city, winners and losers in the latest high stakes bid to revive the boardwalk at aljazerra.com/americatonight.

of all the investments the united states made in afghanistan, one was held out at most valuable, maybe even critical to the nation's future. edge games. in fact, the u.s. has dumped over a billion dollars in to building schools, training teachers, creating opportunity for a new generation in afghanistan, but as we noted in our previous segment, that is, again, now looking even more like more money down the drain. a member of our team at america tonight and she is now an investigative correspondent at

buzz feed news, as we said the special inspector general did note some of the failed schools but you actually went to see them yourself. how many and what did you find there in. >> we went to more than 50 u.s. funded schools across the country. and for -- in seven different provinces and founds many of them resembled abandoned buildings, they had shuddered, boarded up windows, smashed glass, many of the roofs were collapsing or rain water was leaking through them on to the students. but in some cases out right failures, for example, one school that the united states military says it completed is sitting half done in a village across the street some 50 children in the community stud any a nearby mosque that is falling apart, they are cramped, reading the koran, the girls don't go to school. in another

uiad funded school in the gps coordinates it's not there. the coordinates are actually in a school that didn't operate for three years, and is named after a -- an accused human rights abuser who is the police chief of kandahar. >> it is amazing to receipt your story, to read the waste. and we have seen it as well with the special inspector general's report as well. we have seen what they say and your report on the ground buzz feed as well. these indications of waste. but it is awfully hard for us to evaluate. you go going as an american journalist going to these remote places how were you able to travel, particularly as a woman and going in there. >> it came down to knowing the cop text and getting a better sense of what are the best ways to fit in and what not to do versus what draws a lot of attention to yourself that in any many ways for people might think will make them more secure, but in fact don't. >> did you sense a lot of

frustration among the people in the community about what did and didn't happen with these schools? >> yeah. i mean, the only reason i went to that school that was never finished was because locals in the community said, you know what, you are asking us about these other schools what you need to check ute is the school that was enough finished what you see are these projects that didn't work out so building. community remembers them. evening if they are not the largest percentage of the u.s.-funded schools that happened. the ones that didn't work out well community members point out -- pointed out to me readily. >> you can read all of the investigating report on go schools at buzz feed news. next we move from education to a history lesson. >> a priceless part of afghanistan's history that's destine today slip way like grains of sand. and butting a price on putting a price on another treasure, mission to the moon and the valuable souvenirs brought back.

"america tonight's" adam may with space swag, who owns a piece of the moon? next week on "america tonight." >> hidden in the mountains of afghanistan. >> what you have seen was a drop of the iceberg. >> a 5000 year old archeological site. >> this has preservation on a scale that no other sites have. >> under threat by global mining and scheduled for demolition. >> mes aynak is one of the most important sites in the century. >> with time running out... >> they're losing everything. >> can archeologists stop the clock? >> this is rescue archaeologic - we are trying to excavate as fast as possible.

♪ well, there is increased focus on what the u.s. has done to rebuild afghanistan, its new leaders have turned attention to creating opportunities for the country. but a project that promises great wealth for the future now threatens a priceless treasure of after began stan's past. a spot along the great silk road outside kabul called mess ino k is one of the most important archeological sites but sits on some $100 billion worth of copper and a chinese company is ready to begin mining it. a new film, save, documents the archeologists race against time

to save a buried treasure. ♪ ♪

>> we are just hired by ministry of mines, we are trying to do our best. at the moment we have got only four more months to finish which seems to be almost impossible . in this case, probably no one is able to stop mining

.

>> yeah, i take it down this much at a time. >> they removed the topsoil and now -- >> and the driver has been shown shown. >> not a problem. when he hits stone, yes. >> this is restless a archeology, we were trying to record as favas possible. that's why it looks like some good guys are using heavy machinery for excavating. i would be more randy to excavate according to old standards, recording just

digging using manpower. but unfortunately, we have no time . this is amazing. i haven't seen this before. it's amazing. it's the best of the best. this is a temple it's possible we have three, four, five subsequent phases of occupation here.

"america tonight" a who is to the world. it is still unclear when the chinese company will begin mining. their deal these them free rein too begin at any time. you can see the full documentary this sunday at 10:00 p.m. eastern on al jazerra america. and that's "america tonight" please tell us what you think at aljazerra.com/americatonight. talk to us on twitter or facebook and come back. we'll have more of "america tonight" tomorrow.

>> a u.n. brokered truce comments into effect in yemen while the people wait for much needed supplies. hello and welcome to al jazeera i'm elizabeth puranam. eurozone here's hears a new bailout proposal.