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Could Afghanistan prosper if aid is redirected to the less violent north?
Written by: Astrid Zweynert
International donors have given more than $20 billion in development and humanitarian aid to Afghanistan since the Taliban were toppled in 2001 but there is widespread criticism among aid agencies and observers that funds are insufficient and misused. Among the problems preventing donor money from being put to its intended use - for example to build roads or deliver food to the poorest - is deteriorating security, as well as corruption.
The head of the United Nations mission in Kabul has come up with a suggestion to make the money work - the West should redirect much of its aid to long-term development projects in Afghanistan's more peaceful north rather than aiming so much of it at the violent south.
Kai Eide, the secretary-general's special representative in Kabul, told Britain's Guardian newspaper that the Afghan economy could only be build up by spending more money in the north.
"No doubt that we will need further economic development in the south but the main economic engines are in the north," Eide told the paper in an interview.
Eide will the tell U.N. Security Council that the United States and its allies should focus efforts to support key development areas including agriculture, transport and unlocking Afghanistan's vast untapped mineral wealth, the Guardian said.
Eide's proposals are part of a plan to kickstart the government of President Hamid Karzai who has suffered a drop in popularity with Western leaders amid accusations of fraud in last month's election. An EU observer mission has described as "suspicious" more than a quarter of votes, including more than a third of those cast for Karzai.
"The day a new president is inaugurated is decision time for the new in terms of choosing what direction the country will go," Eide said. "We only have five or perhaps six months to start seeing real change. We have reached a turning point and the government needs to understand that."
UN officials say by rapidly getting on with large-scale development projects, huge numbers of jobs will be quickly created and in the longer term major infrastructure will be built that will produce the tax revenues the country needs to thrive independently, the Guardian said.
The U.N.'s main development adviser in Kabul, Mark Ward, said western aid money was struggling to make an impact in the south of the country. "We're saying to the US, UK and Canada and others that you are spending too much in the economically unproductive parts of the country," he was quoted in the Guardian as saying.
"They can't spend that money because of the security situation. Those hundreds of millions of dollars could be up north, getting something done."
Do you think this idea could work? And if so, what will happen to the south?
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1 response to “Could Afghanistan prosper if aid is redirected to the less violent north?”
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05 Oct 2009 16:53:53 GMT
1) Corruption is not a southern issue. 2) Such aid would inevitably empower northern power brokers. 3) Agricultural support without factories for glass and plastic production as well as production of Afghan textiles and food products - bringing income as well as needed products - and without grass roots food preservation projects - to help capture the agricultural output - would simply magnify the current crisis to crisis management cycle.
The north has not been idle; it has been developing education and business and boasts quality highways. However, militant activity is not absent in the more peaceful northern areas. If the plan is to be tried, training and spending and military are not enough in a save-face society: there has to be a campaign of honoring the pillars of a successful society, such as teachers, lawyers, medical professionals, etc., as well as the farmer; and in such a society, the honoring has to begin with honoring the elders of such professions. There is a significant number of young men and women who are educated and visionary but remain in unemployment or with poor wages because older, often less educated but more powerful, workers must fill jobs. Many such young men and women try to turn to the ngo wealth and bypass their society's seniority ladder so that Afghanistan's children see an illusion of wealth in ngo vehicles and offices that is not connected to the poverty in their homes and! communities. There is a bottleneck in the supply of brilliant young minds which can only be addressed by honoring and professional development support for the current work force seniors (of which many have been left behind in their professional knowledge during the past decades of war). They are the ones who hold the right to promote anything in society; promotion from anyone else is child's play and suspect. They are the ones with a rich perspective on their national struggle and history which will have to be passed on to construct the identity of future generations.