For several months, even since David Kilcullen kicked off an entire season of propagandistic reporting from RC-East on the security value of roads, I have been searching for any sort of metric that has tracked IED placement and violence levels over time as the roads were paved. While several USAID and NGO workers have sent me emails and left comments in various posts (on both sides, though the USAID folks tended to argue for roads=security, and NGO folks tended to argue against), actual metrics have not been readily forthcoming. Worse still, anecdotal evidence suggests road paving might make the security problem worse, as it allows militant fighters far greater freedom of movement.
Even so, it is possible roads really do have a huge security pay off. So how do you measure that? The GAO finally took a stab (pdf) at the issue, and their conclusion is not very optimistic:
U.S. agencies involved in road reconstruction efforts in Afghanistan know little about the impact of road projects, since they have not conducted assessments to determine the degree to which the projects have achieved economic development and humanitarian assistance goals. While agencies reported some examples of positive impact, these are based on limited data, a qualitative evaluation, or anecdotal information, and therefore cannot be generalized. Several factors have limited agencies’ abilities to conduct impact assessments. For USAID, these include limited attention to the design of impact evaluations prior to project implementation, lack of timely data collection for its two major road projects, and deficiencies in the frameworks for assessing results of Afghanistan road projects. For Defense, they include failure to assess the results of its road projects and lack of clear guidance on the evaluation of its CERP-funded projects. Moreover, since no other donor has conducted impact evaluation of its road projects in Afghanistan, little is known about the impact of other road reconstruction as well. (pp. 25)
This gets at Harry Rud’s original complaint about roads. So, what role does security play in road construction? Do roads play a positive role in changing the security environment?
According to U.S. government and other donor officials, poor security is the most difficult challenge they face in implementing road projects. The security situation in some parts of the country has delayed road construction projects and increased costs. For example, USAID signed a contract for about $8 million to construct the Kajaki road in May 2007. According to USAID, this road is important as it connects the Kajaki dam, a source of water and power in southern Afghanistan, to the ring road. However, because attacks prevented contractors from working on the project, it was terminated in 2008 after USAID had spent about $5 million. USAID’s first Afghan infrastructure program also experienced cost increases due to deteriorating security. According to a USAID Office of the Inspector General report, almost $9 million of a proposed ceiling increase to the contract was directly attributable to increased security costs. 15 Additionally, according to USACE road project data and officials, security issues resulted in frequent schedule delays for roads. For example, a contractor in Zabul province had six employees kidnapped, and as of May 2008, work on the project had not progressed for almost 60 days.
According to donors we spoke with in Afghanistan, security is a major concern in the south and the east, and is also becoming a concern in the north. Due to deteriorating security conditions, as of February 2008, Japan has been able to complete construction of only 12 percent of a 114kilometer-long section of the Kandahar-Herat road in southern Afghanistan. 16 This road section was originally estimated to be completed by July 2006. According to a Japanese official, the construction costs for this section have increased to more than three times the initial estimate. Additionally, because the Japanese contractor responsible for this section left due to increasingly dangerous conditions, Japan has re-awarded a contract for 50 kilometers of this road section to a local contractor.
In addition to monetary costs, attacks in areas where roads are being reconstructed have resulted in loss of life and injuries among workers. As of March 2008, 162 contractors associated with USAID roads programs have been killed and 202 have been injured or disabled in attacks since 2003. 17 There are more casualties associated with road programs than with any other USAID program in Afghanistan, according to USAID data. Defense contractors have also suffered casualties. For example, one project was delayed by at least 30 days while the contractor organized a new team after 18 workers were killed in an attack, according to a USACE official. (pp. 21-3)
This seems to back up my original complaint about the roads=security campaign: security must be in place first for roads to be built. The other challenges the GAO mentions, from budgeting problems to no planning or coordination, are for another time (and speaks to deeper issues with how reconstruction has been consistently haphazard and even counterproductive over the past six years).
So we’re left, here, again. Roads have many uses, and are essential to the future health of Afghanistan. But why was there such a push to sell them as a security strategy, when no one can really say what effect they had? Moreover, why was that meme dropped so suddenly? None of the reporting from RC-East focuses on roads anymore—it is all about… deteriorating security. And here I thought all those roads we paved in RC-East actually helped secure the environment.
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There are two elements in the relationship between good roads and security: The ease of movement of security forces and the improved public relations with the local population.
But as an Afghan acquaintance in Peshawar (originally from Paktika) pointed out, the PRTs stress the road improvements with the local people as for their benefit but generally the local people see the road improvements being done for the military to move their vehicles more rapidly. And as the Kajaki road project implies, the promise of a new improved hard surface road putting many people to work in the process does little for security through hostile regions. This is one example where the line between military operations and development activities gets blurred. The road becomes a negative symbol rather than a hoped for improvement.
As my statistics professor pointed out years ago, there may not be a causal relationship between events although there may be a measurable co relationship. For example, there is a frequent co relationship between fire damage to a building and the number of firetrucks at the scene…but not causal.
And then there was the case of a short (5-10 miles) cobblestone road being built in Helmand from Lashkar Gah out to Kala Bist, previously a tourist site with little agriculture importance. A team of cobblestone road builders were brought in from Bolivia to do the work and to train Afghans in the process. The project clearly moved a lot of funds but would have minimum impact on this traditional cash crop region…presently into poppy. For example, the primary farm road through Nawa, a major irrigated agricultural district nearby was left unimproved.
This region gets some 4 inches of rain a year which reduces the need for hard surfaced farm roads but reasonable drainage and periodic grading would help. And cobblestone road builders could be found in neighboring Pakistan.
The farmers of central Helmand, the largest irrigation system in the country, have been stressing three things to help them get out of opium poppy cultivation (which they consider evil) since at least 1997: improve the irrigation system that had seen no real maintenance in roughly 20 years, improve the farm to market roads through the region to minimize damage to produce like melons, and help with the markets/prices of their traditional cash crops like cotton, vegetables, melons, peanuts etc. But the promises of a major reconstruction program have been slow in coming, frequently mis-timed, mismanaged and focused on many activities that did not bring direct benefits to what should have been the target population. Results: disillusionment with the process and the foreign doner community, increased opium poppy cultivation, growing corruption, and decreased security even with a number of new roads. A causal relationship? I think so.
RScott,
We’re discussing two different things. I’m with you that roads are a critical piece of economic development, and vastly improved infrastructure will be one of the main keys to stabilizing the country. However, the causal relationship between roads and security seems reversed in most media reporting: security must come first, and roads second. That is not the way the relationship has been reported.
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