Page 1 of 2 SPEAKING FREELY A way through the Afghan labyrinth
By M Ashraf Haidari
Speaking Freely is an Asia Times Online feature that allows guest writers to have
their say.
Please click hereif you are interested in contributing.
Since international re-engagement in Afghanistan was initiated seven years ago,
the key institutions of a permanent government have been established.
Considerable progress has been made in rebuilding infrastructure, in expanding
access to basic healthcare, and in providing education to an increasing number
of Afghan girls and boys across the country.
However, the country's progress is increasingly eclipsed by inter-connected
challenges with domestic, international, regional and transnational dimensions
that impede its stabilization and reconstruction. Each challenge facing the
country feeds off the
other and together they have engendered a vicious circle that is destabilizing
Afghanistan and increasingly Pakistan too.
Afghanistan is geographically landlocked, politically and economically
least-developed, and unfortunately located in a predatory neighborhood, where
Pakistan's military establishment has traditionally seen a stable Afghanistan
as a threat in the context of the country's hostile relations with India. Also,
its nascent state institutions are weak and lack the requisite resources to
deliver basic public goods to a population of vulnerable groups (eg, returning
refugees, IDPs (internally displaced people), the disabled, former combatants,
jobless youth, the elderly, and women and children), all of whom are engulfed
in poverty and misery.
The lack of aid resources and a weak strategic coordination of aid
implementation by the international community is another challenge. Observers
of Afghanistan are certain to recall that, from the beginning, the
international community has re-engaged in the country with a very light
footprint. In 2001, during the initial planning stages for the war in
Afghanistan, coalition member states agreed that a sound strategy had to
include and combine combat operations, humanitarian relief and stability and
reconstruction efforts.
In the years since the Taliban were driven from Kabul, coalition members have
neither fully committed to the reconstruction task, nor have they ensured that
there is a match between ends and means. As former US special envoy to
Afghanistan James Dobbins notes, "Mismatches between inputs, as measured in
personnel and money, and desired outcomes, as measured in imposed social
transformation, are the most common cause for failure of nation-building
efforts." Because too few troops and resources were committed to the country
early on, this is exactly the direction Afghanistan is heading towards.
According to a recent report by the Agency Coordinating Body for Afghan Relief
(ACBAR), Afghanistan received just US$57 per capita in foreign assistance,
while Bosnia and East Timor received $679 and $233 respectively, in the two
years following international intervention. Per capita security assistance to
Afghanistan remains woefully low with 1.5 foreign troops per 1,000 people,
compared to seven per 1,000 in Iraq and 19 per 1,000 in Bosnia.
When it comes to international aid, the numbers can be deceptive, as donors
have tended to bypass the Afghan government and funnel assistance to foreign
non-profit and private-sector institutions. As a result, an estimated 40% of
aid has gone back to donor countries in the form of corporate profits and
consultant salaries. Overall, some $6 billion has been spent in this way since
2001, according to ACBAR. It should be noted that each full-time expatriate
consultant costs $250,000-$500,000 per year.
It is clear that the invasion and occupation of Iraq shortchanged Afghanistan's
rebuilding priorities, robbing the new Afghan government of much-needed
resources. The paucity of troops and resources has proven useful for potential
threats like the Taliban, who have intensified their cross-border terrorist
attacks and now control parts of the country.
Although it is now seven years since the fall of the Taliban, no clear
institutional framework for Afghanistan's nation-building and reconstruction
has emerged. Despite broad international consensus and goodwill for the
rebuilding of Afghanistan from the start, the United Nations remains a weak
player in Afghanistan due to a lack of resources to meet its recently expanded
mandate. In the beginning, the UN was deliberately denied an operational role
in Afghanistan, perhaps, due to fears that donor fatigue would soon kick in,
resulting in undelivered pledges of assistance to Afghanistan.
Hence, a lead-nation strategy was adopted, whereby major resourceful countries
assumed responsibility for the reform and building of Afghanistan's key state
institutions. The lead-nation strategy assigned the United States to reform and
build the Afghan National Army (ANA); Germany - the Afghan National Police
(ANP); Japan to disarm, demobilize and fully reintegrate (DDR) former
combatants; Britain to fight and eliminate narcotics; and Italy to reform and
build the judicial system.
Except for substantive progress in the reform and building of ANA, the other
sectors saw nominal or no progress. The lead nations neither established a
collaborative mechanism to ensure strategic coordination across their assigned
tasks, nor did they bring enough resources to bear on implementing the reforms
effectively. In the end, the lead-nation strategy was discontinued, as the
designated countries reconsidered their roles as lead-partners - reasoning that
only Afghanistan should be the lead-nation with them as its major implementing
partners.
A bevy of actors with overlapping mandates, competitive relations and minimal
accountability for performance, have characterized international presence in
Afghanistan. The divergent and diffuse efforts of donors have created diverse
opportunities for factions including the Taliban, drug traffickers, and
criminals to undermine and derail the nation-building process. Efforts to
enhance structures for strategic coordination on the ground, both within the UN
and beyond, have been frustrated by the sheer numbers of actors involved, the
limited extent to which these actors accept the coordination authority and the
absence of policy coordination structures at the headquarters level.
More than 70 countries, international organizations and non-governmental
organizations are present in Afghanistan. Yet, they have consistently worked
outside of the Afghan government. For example, of all technical assistance to
Afghanistan, which accounts for a quarter of all aid to the country, only
one-tenth is coordinated among donors or with the government. Nor is there
sufficient collaboration on project work, which inevitably leads to duplication
of effort. This has seriously undermined the Afghan government's ability to
build its capacity for effective governance and implementation of the rule of
law.
The ultimate aim for both international donors and the President Hamid Karzai
administration is for Afghan authorities to take ownership of the
reconstruction effort. But the lack of international attention to the
rebuilding effort from 2001 through 2004 had a detrimental effect on efforts to
build the capacity of the Afghan government. More specifically, it enabled
corrupt practices to become deeply entrenched. In addition, the scarcity of
financial resources hampered the government's ability to compete with the
private sector for services of the best minds. Many of the government's most
skilled workers have departed to take higher paying jobs with international
organizations. The resulting weak institutional capacity coupled with
underpayment, in turn, fuels corruption, which damages the government's image
in the eyes of Afghans.
Afghanistan would be far less instable if the country were not geographically
cursed. Afghanistan's political and economic stability or instability is
closely linked to the type of regimes in power in the region, those regimes'
particular regional interests, their socio-economic conditions, and more
importantly their relations with one another and with major world powers such
as
Head
Office: Unit B, 16/F, Li Dong Building, No. 9 Li Yuen Street East,
Central, Hong Kong Thailand Bureau:
11/13 Petchkasem Road, Hua Hin, Prachuab Kirikhan, Thailand 77110
