In a February article (which was a retread of a portion of my senior thesis from the previous year), I wrote that one of Afghanistan’s biggest problems was the misallocation of aid—there is too much of it flowing outside the central government, and the result is an ineffective mess. To remedy this, the U.S. and IFIs should set about on a deliberate program to build up Kabul’s institutional capacity, and along the way modify the terms of the various NGOs operating in the country so they work as contractors to the government, as line items of the budget, and not as their own semi-autonomous units.
But since writing it, the discussion of everything going on in Afghanistan has focused on what I see as peripheral, or secondary issues: air raids, projecting the debate over drug legalization, troop levels. The very real, pragmatic ways in which development and aid is happening on the ground has been ignored. In the September/October issue of Foreign Affairs, however (not yet available online), this concern over aid and how it is administered was raised again from an interesting source: Said Jawad, the ambassador to the U.S. He said:
Far too much aid is supply-driven and focused on wasteful technical assistance programs [like Rory Stewart's damn Afghan dam--ed]… Too much aid is delivered outside the government’s budgetary framework and guided by the priorities of donors rather than the national government. Currently, only five percent of international assistance funds are given to the Afghan government, and 83 percent are disbursed without the government’s knowledge or approval. The consequence of this imbalance is a weak sense of ownership of the development process among Afghans themselves. In the absence of proper coordination and oversight, our sovereign government will be ill equipped to address local grievances; meanwhile al Qaeda and the Taliban are capitalizing on the public’s frustration.
While it is heartening to see I’m not out on a limb with this opinion, it is also pretty discouraging to see no one really talking about it. Discussions of Afghanistan (and I’m guilty of this at times, but, I hope, not constantly) tend to boil down to the Taliban or drugs. That needs to change if we’re to address the country’s problems honestly.
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Joshua — couldn’t agree more. I will however admit to being a relative neophyte in these matters… including Rory Stewart’s damn dam article. So I have a question: what does responsible foreign aid look like for Afghanistan?
I just read about Rory advocating for a giant dam, and was a little stunned. His Turquoise Mountain project seems like a great example of reestablishing Afghan industry for Afghans. And while a counter-argument might be made that such a project merely reinscribes Afghanistan as a ‘traditional’ culture (ie. pre-modern, pre-colonial), this is the stuff that modern nations rely on for their own burgeoning tourist industries.
Assuming that they are nevertheless useful in some way for reconstruction, mightn’t ‘big projects’ be the way to go? The comparison I have is from a friend who, as a National Guardsman, has done two tours in Iraq. His observation was that medium-scale reconstruction projects were doomed because, as much as a working generator in a Baghdad neighborhood was beneficial, having a working electrical sub-station in a neighborhood was often seen as a sign of collaboration with occupying forces and was therefore immediately either sabotaged from within or destroyed from without.
Couldn’t it be possible for a mega-project to be of benefit and also big enough to withstand these kinds of relatively local obstacles? (Again, not a Rory Stewart apologist, but looking for some clarity.)
Andrew
Andrew,
I’m all for a full range of development projects; from big to small. A mega-project has the possibility of bringing huge benefits. But it also has the possibility of doing huge harm. That’s what that dam in Afghanistan did. It required a decade worth of feasibility and environmental studies. Instead they just started up the bulldozers and went for it.
Rory Stewart, who I greatly respect, decided not to do the necessary background research before tossing out an anecdote in a very influential newspaper. When you have a large audience you must be as informed as possible. A quick google search and a search of academic journals would have quickly revealed the disaster that was the Helmand Valley Authority system of dams and irrigation.
As for the above article, there is an ongoing debate about over-reliance on NGOs and about how, to a certain extent, they reduce the capacity and relevance of the government as well as taking the best and the brightest locals and have them working for an NGO rather than for the government. The other side of the argument points to the likelihood of not much at all happening without NGOs. I’m not too sure exactly where I fall on this argument. Somewhere in between.
I fully endorse more aid to Afghanistan. I just wonder where all the capacity is going to come from when some Afghan ministries are unable to spend their full budgets ( and when other just pilfer theirs). But the above idea is well worth trying ( if it’s not being done to a certain degree already. I really don’t know development issues that well).
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