TCSDaily ran another article of mine, about how poorly-managed foreign aid is killing Afghanistan. An excerpt:
Overabundance is not a problem traditionally associated with humanitarian missions. Indeed, quite often the opposite is true with programs lacking the funds required by their mandates.
The unfortunate reality in Afghanistan is that, no matter the amount donated, it would be too much. This is because Afghanistan’s biggest problem is not poverty, but government.
Some of the commenters are hilarious, too, if only for their doctrinaire libertarianism (“what’s wrong with private nation-building?”).
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Joshua Foust – author of 1801 posts on Registan.net.
Joshua Foust is a Fellow at the American Security Project and the author of Afghanistan Journal: Selections from Registan.net. His research focuses primarily on Central and South Asia. Joshua is a correspondent for The Atlantic and a columnist for PBS Need to Know. Joshua appears regularly on the BBC World News, Aljazeera, and international public radio. Joshua is also a regular contributor to Foreign Policy’s AfPak Channel, and his writing has appeared in the New York Times, Reuters, and the Christian Science Monitor. Follow him on twitter: @joshuafoust
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Josh, Thank you for posting this article. Very, very interesting…
I am not much of a libertarian or free market maven, but you do have to realize the tortuous experience that Afghanistan has had with central government.
As a commentator argued on an earlier post, the primary purpose of aid is to help the Afghans, not build the legitimacy of the Afghan government.
The central government in Afghanistan has always pilfered revenue, so it’s not merely a case of restoring confidence. In addition, Afghans realize that the only guarantors of current government’s stability is US and NATO. Given this, I would think it rather pointless whether a clueless bureaucrat from Kabul hands out a stick of chalk every morning or an NGO.
Furthermore, for all the waste, there are NGOs that operate efficiently and provide an anemic education and health infra-structure. How long will it take for central government to get to that point? What should people do in the meanwhile? Has anyone bothered to do an analysis of the work-done to funds-provided ratios between NGOs and the Afghan government?
See, those are fair arguments I just didn’t have a chance to address in an 800-word piece. But you’re right – there have historically been major issues with the government in Afghanistan. That’s why I think the current system (which I didn’t do much more than mention) of World Bank oversight – think of it as a guarantee of trust – might have a chance of working.
And, no matter how efficient an NGO is, white Christians will always have an extremely hard time operating in the south. Building up capacity has to happen in any sort of long time solution.
I thought that under Mohammed Zahir Sha (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mohammed_Zahir_Shah) that things in Afghanistan had pretty stable for many years. Not perfect maybe, not Sweden or Denmark, or Norway or Holland, but pretty stable and peaceful–with some sort of actual government that had respect from the population. For example, the recent novel THE KITE RUNNER gives a positive impression of the ancien regime, and I recommend it, although its plot is a little contrived.
I have been privy to some of the workings of NGOs in Afghanistan. Needless to say, it is more intriguing than Clancy’s wildest dreams. We had white Christians funding hard-line Islamists at one end of the spectrum and Maoists the other. Actually, Afghans have received far more services from white Christians than the Afghan government (either now or–in most instances–historically). So the issue isn’t of common distrust. If the Taliban are kept at bay, they will do just fine.
Also, one really can’t put much stock into a novel. If you are sitting atop of the pyramid, of course everything would appear stable, fine and as it should be. Can I safely generalize about American society and its color-blindness from an episode of “I Love Lucy”? The way Afghanistan fractured and slid into hell should be indicative that there was something else a-foot.