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MEDIAWATCH: Bleak forecast for Afghanistan
Written by: Joanne Tomkinson
A man carries his belongings as he walks past a policeman on duty near Peshad village, Kunar Province, eastern Afghanistan.
REUTERS/Oleg Popov (AFGHANISTAN)
REUTERS/Oleg Popov (AFGHANISTAN)
With new figures showing that civilian deaths are now at their highest levels since U.S.-led forces toppled the Taliban seven years ago, and with corruption and mismanagement hampering the international reconstruction effort, there has been an awful lot of bad news coming out of Afghanistan of late. Even as U.S. President Barak Obama readies to send 17,000 more troops into the country, commentators are predicting a rocky road ahead as the situation in Afghanistan looks set to unravel even further. "A grim picture of spiralling violence and a disintegrating society," is how Britain's Independent newspaper paints the situation in Afghanistan. The newspaper refers to a recent NATO report which shows across the board, increases in attacks on the Afghan government, kidnappings and assassinations, fatalities among Western forces, and civilian deaths (which were up by 46 percent on 2008 compared with the previous year). "The security situation in Afghanistan has deteriorated markedly in the past six months. A majority of provinces have slipped out of Kabul's control; foreign troops have become the enemy, and the Taliban have infiltrated ever closer to Kabul," an editorial in The Independent says of the latest decline in the country's stability. "Like the Soviet empire (and the British one before it), the U.S. has failed to understand that controlling Afghanistan is much harder than invading it," the Economist says, adding that the U.S. now looks set to repeat the same errors made by the Soviet Union in the country. Obama's decision to send more American troops to Afghanistan actually shows how badly things are going, reflected in an editorial in the magazine. "The war in Afghanistan will be won, if at all, by means of more troops on the ground (to reduce the dependence on air power and the civilian casualties it brings); through huge investment in development; and through piecemeal arrangements with local tribes and powerbrokers, including the Taliban," the Economist continues. More troops, however, aren't seen by all as essential to solving the country's problems. "The additional 17,000 troops the Obama administration is preparing to send to Afghanistan will face both an aggressive, well-armed Taliban insurgency and an unarmed but equally daunting foe: public opinion," says the Washington Post. "In more than a dozen interviews across the capital this week, Afghans said that instead of helping to defeat the insurgents and quell the violence that has engulfed their country, more foreign troops will exacerbate the problem," says The Post. "The growing negative perception of foreign forces is especially worrisome because U.S. military planners say they are counting on intensified interaction and co-operation with Afghan civilians as a vital complement to their expanded use of ground troops and firepower against the Islamist forces." The Dallas News also found problems with the military methods being proposed. "We're losing the war against the Taliban ... The options aren't good; the way forward is murky," an editorial in the paper says. "The U.S. must step up its efforts to help Afghan civilians by building schools, hospitals and other facilities to improve their lives," the editorial concludes. But many disagree that the development efforts as they stand now offer a path to peace in the struggling country. Corruption, incompetence, chronic mismanagement and profiteering are seriously hampering efforts to reconstruct the country, writes Britain's Guardian newspaper. The Afghan government now says $5 billion, a third of all the international aid delivered, cannot be accounted for. The reconstruction culture in Afghanistan is of lucrative contracts repeatedly sub-contracted till there are few funds left to complete the building of hospitals, schools or roads, and huge sums are wasted on expatriate consultants, the Guardian, which has a video on how some of the money has been wasted, shows. With too many organisations registered as NGOs when they are nothing of the sort, and too little transparency and openness about who gets what projects, there are serious issues with the way that the aid system works in Afghanistan says Conor Foley, a humanitarian aid worker. "Humanitarian aid has become a multi-billion dollar industry in recent years, and has outgrown the checks that are needed to regulate (it)," Foley points out. The problems go beyond Afghanistan, he adds. "(The U.N.) takes funds from donors and then distributes these to NGOs, who in turn hire local staff and contractors to actually get the work done. Everyone takes a cut along the way," Foley says. "As the sums of money involved have grown ever bigger - and as an increasing amount of the aid has been used for overtly political purposes - the problem has grown more serious. Unless urgent action is taken, the humanitarian sector as a whole is going to have its image permanently tarnished by what is currently happening," the humanitarian aid worker writing for the Guardian concludes.
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5 responses to “MEDIAWATCH: Bleak forecast for Afghanistan”
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26 Feb 2009 09:28:14 GMT
NGO salaries are located on an actual payscale ranging from the low-as-dirt end based upon the national economy to the ultra-high end based upon the specialized economy of international aid. In a culture where seniority is highly valued, the international aid community has unintentionally elevated young (westernized)men and women - many having been educated abroad while refugees - high high above the resident seniors of institutions such as education and medicine. Such a culture perhaps has a full blown identity crisis that the westernized young professionals do not feel until they find themselves needing a job within the ordinary fabric of the society where they appear as overqualified and immoral. However, there are middle aged and older respectable Afghans (both men and women)who have applied their energy and meager resources to their own professional development. This suggests that if/when the society's own values of seniori! ty would be patiently respected by ngo agendas, older educated Afghans might retake their rightful positions (and perhaps foster much respect and appreciation from the rural seniority-oriented population). However, there appears to be a severe lack of opportunity for professional development for this group of people who are nevertheless so prominent in the small towns and provincial capitals.
26 Feb 2009 09:34:31 GMT
How can a highly paid consultant at $1000 - $2000 per day, an intergovernmental 'NGO' and the UNOPS leave so little in the kitty that Khair Khana Hospital in Kabul constructed in 2003 couldn't afford to be built with a heating system where temperatures are sub zero in winter? How many children's lives will be compromised or worse, die because this hospital and one in Kandahar are not fit for hospitalized patients?
Referring to Afghan government officials as corrupt and greedy is two-faced. Regarding military 'owning the roads', slamming their way into homes in the night and the rising rates of civilian deaths and daily misery sounds similar to the actions of the occupying forces in Palestine and Iraq. Same modus operandi. See http:www.ivaw.org/ Winter Soldiers Testimonies. Is harming and marginalizing civilians further through overt and covert hypocrisy, greed, and terror democracy in action? No. These actions do not constitute social equality. In my opinion, the civilians are perceived by coalition forces and pseudo humanitarians as merely in the way or as a means to an end. If this is democracy being exported, then we from these democracies need to question if we are truly living in authentic democracies. More testimony and transparency is needed, because, ���If a path to the better there be, it begins with a full look at the worst.��� Quote by Thomas Hardy.26 Feb 2009 09:59:36 GMT
Afghanistan is like a wild horse running in its mountain Terran and only with a true Afghanistan leadership this wild horse will come under control. While the fight to install democratic reforms is underway NATO forces should involve local population in their reforms in education health and other community developments. Any existing corruptions among NGOs should be eradicated and local population should get all development benefits to the hard hit villages.
NATO should get full backing among the neighbouring Asian countries for their fight against insurgents in this land locked Afghanistan without the neighbouring countries support it is difficult for NATO to continue this struggle. A future democratic peoples government will bring peace and drug free rule not only to Afghanistan but to all of South Asia.27 Feb 2009 17:13:41 GMT
The media makes it sound like western troops are killing all the civilians, but the vast majority of civilian casualties are a direct result of AAF action, not NATO or ISAF or the US. You won't understand until you see it yourself. Please go and see the truth, don't just sit and read articles and think that makes you educated on the subject. Don't have time to go? Talk to some people who were there. A poll of "nearly a dozen" people in the capital city isn't a valid poll at all, and you people know it.
02 Mar 2009 02:21:14 GMT
Bob hit the nail on the head. I am a soldier in Afghanistan and I can say from firsthand experience that almost all civilian casualties are the result of the criminal actions of the Taliban and other AAF who deliberately place innocents in harm's way, sometimes deliberately slaughtering innocents and blaming Coalition Forces for the deaths. This is documented. Corruption on the part of local authorities is another tremendous obstacle to progress. If international aid organizations and their sponsoring governments do not find better ways to render actual improvements and vet contractors, then everything else is in vain. Our credibility is on the line.