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Afghanistan and broken
promises
By Hooman Peimani
Last week, Afghan President Hamid Karzai
threatened to resign if Afghan warlords refused to
transfer to his barely-functioning government over
US$500 million in collected taxes. His "threat" only
brought smiles to the faces of the warlords, the
practical rulers of Afghanistan apart from the capital
Kabul, who reportedly promised cooperation with the
Karzai government only to add another item to their long
list of unfulfilled promises. However, the event
reminded the international community one more time how
forgotten Afghanistan has been left on its own to deal
with its numerous economic problems as most
international donors have failed to honor their pledges
of sustainable adequate financial aid.
In the
absence of the required funds to address immediate
problems and to begin the badly needed reconstruction
program, the worsening economic situation has created
grounds for the continuation of all the ills of the
pre-Karzai era. Taliban/al-Qaeda have regrouped and
expanded their military operations against American
forces and those of its Afghan and non-Afghan allies.
Beside inflicting daily causalities on those forces,
they now even capture small cities for a short while to
show their power. The Karzai administration is
practically non-existent outside Kabul, while it can
only survive in that city thanks to 5,000 foreign
troops; its president can only trust his American
bodyguards with his life.
A major, if not the
major, internal reason for the worsening political,
economic and security situation is the inability of the
Afghan central government in tackling its country's
impoverishment. Not only has Afghanistan's
reconstruction not begun in a meaningful way, the amount
of available foreign aid has been less than the
financial assistance promised in the January 2002 Tokyo
conference. The donors participating in that conference
pledged over $4.5 billion towards Afghanistan's
reconstruction to be provided to the Afghan government
over five years. However, most of the pledged assistance
will most likely not be honored. This became evident in
2002 as only about 50 percent of the promised amount
($1.8 billion) for that year actually reached
Afghanistan.
Although this amount was less than
anticipated, it could still have made a significant
positive impact had it been given to the Afghan
government. The latter could have spent it on necessary
projects to address immediate pressing needs, while
providing for the required infrastructure to embark on a
reconstruction program. However, the largest chunk of
the internationally-provided funds was spent not on the
badly needed projects, but on the expenses related to
the settlement and operation of various United Nations
agencies and non-government organizations operating in
Afghanistan. Such expenses included those of their
various work and residential facilities, the hefty
salaries for their mainly Western employees and their
spotless new air-conditioned cars.
This reality
has put the Karzai government in a difficult situation.
On the one hand it totally depends on foreign
assistance, and as such it cannot alienate donors even
when they do not fulfill all their promises. On the
other hand, it cannot remain silent while the
international community assumes the launching of an
adequate internationally-funded reconstruction program
in Afghanistan. As a result, Karzai has confined himself
so far to expressing his disappointment on two major
occasions.
For the first time, he mentioned the
foreign aid problem during his speech at the annual
meeting of the Economic Cooperation Organization held in
Istanbul in October last year. He described "how upset
he was to hear earlier [in 2002] that $890 million had
been spent on aid in Afghanistan, but that $800 million
of it had gone to the UN and other aid agencies".
As the problem persisted despite his expression
of disappointment, this year Karzai made an appeal to
donors to avail their financial assistance directly to
his government rather than providing it to multinational
entities, such as UN agencies, and NGOs. In a March 6
speech at a business meeting in New Delhi, he stated:
"With regard to the reconstruction activity, we can say
that we are over 50 percent satisfied. With regard to
the money coming through the Afghan government channels,
we are unhappy. "We're really looking forward to an
increase in the direct input into the Afghan
governmental system for reconstruction. So our response
is a mixed one. Thank you for your help, but do it more
through our government."
After over two decades
of civil war, Afghanistan requires extensive foreign aid
and investment to create a viable economy through a
reconstruction program. However, most Western counties,
which have promised not to leave the Afghans alone in
the post-Taliban era as they did when the Soviet Union
collapsed in 1991, are yet to honor fully their
promises. Generally speaking, Western foreign aid has
only helped prevent a humanitarian crisis in
Afghanistan, while its has failed to provide for the
reconstruction program at the required scale. Apart from
the Afghan authorities, even the American military
figures stationed in Afghanistan, such as
Lieutenant-General Dan McNeill, have complained about
this failure, which undermines efforts to stabilize the
country. As the chief of the American forces in
Afghanistan, he criticized Western donors in his April
23 remarks.
Added to the unresolved security
problems, the war against the remnants of the
Taliban/al-Qaeda and the destructive activities of the
Afghan warlords, the mentioned foreign aid problem has
contributed to a negligible progress in reconstruction.
After over 18 months of foreign-assisted reconstruction
efforts, Afghanistan still requires major investments to
create the vital components of an infrastructure, namely
sanitation, water supplies, power generation, health
services, telecommunications, road/railroad network,
education and security services. So far, small-scale
projects have accounted for the majority of the
reconstruction initiatives with a limited impact on
Afghanistan's economic recovery.
In the absence
of a functioning formal economy, unsurprisingly the
black economy, with its various mushrooming illegal
activities, including drug production and trafficking,
has become the only reliable source of income and
employment for war-torn Afghanistan. The latter further
expands insecurity and lawlessness with a preventive
effect on economic revitalization.
Against this
background, Karzai's threat only reminded the
international community of his government's struggle to
survive and to run Afghanistan. It also offered the
majority of the Western media a second of news different
from the disappearing reporting on occupied Iraq, now
ironically a source of unity between the coalitions of
the "willing" and the "unwilling". As for the
American-backed warlords, they simply did not care.
Dr Hooman Peimani works as an
independent consultant with international organizations
in Geneva and does research in international
relations.
(Copyright 2003 Asia Times Online
Co, Ltd. All rights reserved. Please contact content@atimes.com for
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