BUT AT WHAT PRICE?
Lessons from the past decade must inform the next, write NIPA BANERJEE and YIAGADEESEN SAMY.
Since early 2001, the international community has been awash with analysis, advice and actions on ways to stabilize Afghanistan. Most of these efforts have been inspired and driven by non-Afghans and many have failed. Now, with the 2014 withdrawal of American and NATO troops on the horizon and the transition of control over governance and national security to Afghanistan underway, the need to stimulate debate and dialogue by examining Afghan views on the path to sovereignty and a safe society has taken on new importance.
In Canada, a transparent discussion is especially necessary after the recent announcement the Canadian International Development Agency is being folded into the Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade. The news of the merger has created fears that Canada’s development aid, the main objective of which is poverty reduction and long-term development, will be diverted to serving Canadian shortterm commercial and political interests.
These concerns are of special importance to fragile countries such as Afghanistan that are heavily dependent on aid but where Canada’s commercial interests are practically non-existent.
To hear and openly debate the Afghan side of the story, often absent in the Western media, the University of Ottawa social sciences faculty recently invited Afghan experts to a colloquium to share their views on both the changes that have taken place in their country over the decade since the fall of the Taliban and on the way forward.
To be sure, the visiting Afghans delivered messages about major gains and achievements on the economic and political fronts. Mustafa Mastoor, the country’s deputy finance minister, talked about impressive growth rates — a per-capita GDP growth of nine per cent since 2003 — increases in domestic revenues and improvements in infrastructure, health services and education. Haneef Atmar, a former cabinet minister, founder of the Truth and Justice Party and a potential presidential candidate, spoke of unprecedented gains in democracy, state-building, human rights and development.
But the real question is whether the gains achieved are proportional to the staggering aid dollars — some $42 billion — disbursed by donors, including Canada, from 2002 to 2011.
Our assessment is that not enough progress has taken place. Millions of Afghans are still unable to meet their minimum basic needs and, according to World Bank data, the real per-capita growth figure over that decade has actually been closer to six per cent. Unfortunately, lack of data prevents us from examining the exact impact of aid on poverty, clearly an area where more work needs to be done.
But there is little doubt Afghanistan remains an extremely weak — some may even say a failed — state. It has been consistently ranked among the most fragile countries in the world over the last decade. The well-known Failed States Index produced by the Fund for Peace, a Washington-based think tank, shows that Afghanistan’s fragility score significantly deteriorated from 2004 to 2010.
Carleton University research (carleton.ca/cifp) on fragile states indicates a similar trend. In its recent Human Development Report, Afghanistan is ranked 175th out of 187 countries, below the average of countries in the low human development category, even if its score has improved marginally over time.
There’s more. On average, aid represents more than 40 per cent of the Afghanistan’s national income, and overall outside financial assistance is even higher when security-related expenses are added. Afghanistan remains a highly aid-dependent country, and despite plans to increase revenue through improved tax collection and development of the mining sector, its financing gap is likely to persist for many years.
Yet presenting a balanced view of Afghanistan’s achievements requires an answer to a fair question: How many countries, with or without the enormous difficulties encountered by Afghanistan — a place where thousands of foreign soldiers failed to contain a decade of violence — can claim a growth rate of even six per cent over 10 years?
Certainly, the Afghan experts gathered at the recent Ottawa colloquium were justified in pointing out that nearly 80 per cent of foreign aid received in the last decade had not been allocated through the Afghan national budget, nor was the money always aligned with the government’s priorities. It is a problem to which donors, including Canada, have paid little attention.
Even so, given the high level of corruption in the country — Afghanistan tied North Korea and Somalia at the bottom of Transparency International’s 2012 Corruption Perceptions Index — it will be difficult to convince donors to flow aid dollars through the Afghan government’s budget. Corrective actions are required by both donors and the recipient to fix this situation.
Afghans’ appeal for aid to promote economic growth and development certainly needs donor support, especially when reform-minded Afghan leaders, such as those who spoke in Ottawa, do not deny the challenging issues their country is failing to meet.
In fact, it is precisely to make progress in these areas of deficiency that the Afghan speakers emphasized the need for international support after 2014 and for many years after. Indeed, the focus on transformation will be in vain if the quickly deteriorating situation now threatening the past decade’s gains in democracy, state building and development is not arrested with the help of international partners.
Atmar, one of Afghanistan’s most visionary leaders, spoke with succinct clarity of his country’s security concerns, the ineffective peace-and-reconciliation efforts, the potential for a marred political transition in the absence of electoral reforms, the deteriorating rule of law, increasing human rights violations, uncertain economic growth with deepening poverty conditions and of the dangers emanating from the increasingly strained partnership between the Afghan government and its helpful western partners, mainly the U.S. and NATO.
According to Atmar, security data show a 15-per-cent reduction in insurgent attacks in 2012 but a 10-percent increase in Afghan casualties. The loss of lives and territory to insurgents remains high despite troop surges, and an accelerated drawdown of international troops would intensify security challenges. In that respect, we believe that the retention of residual forces is needed.
Atmar gave a failing grade to the reconciliation efforts, which are basically stalled and reflect the insurgents’ lack of interest in negotiating with President Hamid Karzai. As well, there is an absence of the enabling factors needed to promote peace and reconciliation: national unity, state legitimacy and people’s support of the Afghan government. At the same time, the much-needed partnership between Afghanistan and the U.S. and NATO is tattered and support from Pakistani and other countries in the region is non-existent.
For a credible political transition to take place, the Afghan leaders emphasized the importance of serious electoral reform — replacing the Afghan government’s usual rhetoric about free and fair elections — along with assurances of security and confirmation of financing, the latter two requiring help from the international community that set the establishment of democracy as a key objective of its involvement in Afghanistan.
State building, another important focus of international engagement, has also posed an enormous challenge in the absence of formal government structures. The efforts of donor nations to build institutions for delivery of basic services to citizens have largely failed.
Afghans are also worried by the low impact of development assistance, arising out of “ineffective aid” by donors. That contradicts the principles that donor nations agreed to observe through the 2005 Paris Declaration on aid effectiveness, which called for donor investment in the recipient government’s priority development programs as well as accountability for those investments. A 2010 assessment of Afghan aid effectiveness practices suggested that donors failed to comply with the Paris agreement.
Little progress has been made in meeting the conditions agreed upon by Afghans and donors at a conference in Tokyo in 2012. Because concerns over corruption, patronage and the absence of a system of justice, especially for the protection of women, have not yet been addressed, reductions in aid flows, along with military cuts, are inevitable.
Atmar acknowledged the need for his own government to fight corruption and to focus on poverty reduction, an inclusive development process for women and the vulnerable, protection of human rights and the promotion of the rule of law.
At their Ottawa gathering, the Afghans also expressed concern about the increasingly strained partnership between the Afghan government and the Americans and NATO over counter-insurgency operations and sovereignty imperatives. Those strains have slowed the finalization of the U.S.-Afghan bilateral security agreement that would provide continued
Haneef Atmar, a former cabinet minister, founder of the Truth and Justice Party and a potential presidential candidate, expressed concern about the increasingly strained partnership between the Afghan government and the Americans and NATO over counter-insurgency operations and sovereignty imperatives.
American security assistance after 2014. Atmar also said the extremely anti-Western stance adopted by Karzai in recent months is not only dangerous, it is not shared by all Afghan leaders nor ordinary Afghans.
In short, the initial high hopes for Afghanistan’s transformation decade — from 2015-2024 and beyond — are far from guaranteed. After more than 10 years of military and financial support, Western interest in Afghanistan is clearly on the decline and aid fatigue has begun to set in.
The security situation after the withdrawal of international troops in 2014, which will coincide with a political transition as the country holds presidential elections, can best be described as uncertain and volatile. It is far from clear that the Afghan National Security Forces will be able to guarantee security, making the presence of a residual military force extremely important.
We also do not recommend a quick reduction of aid levels that could lead to a collapse of the economy resulting from a large and unsustainable financial gap. That would further reduce the state’s capacity to deliver services, lead to a erosion of confidence and the loyalty of citizens and have a negative impact on state legitimacy.
There is, of course, a commensurate need for the Afghan government to exercise proper leadership, to fight corruption and to ensure the direction of aid flows towards poverty reduction, human rights protection and the rule of law. In fact, the transition outlook would improve if the international community supports the roles of reform-minded national actors for stabilization of the fragile state, bearing in mind that outside help can only provide a stimulus to stability — it cannot lead or drive the stabilization process.
Afghanistan, outside of the circle of the president and his advisers, is not empty of leadership and political will. That much was made clear by the delineation by the Afghan speakers of the list of actions considered essential in each of the areas of deficiency posing threats to the transition to stability. Those proposed actions certainly comply with the requirements identified by international analysts.
The next few years will present serious challenges, but we prefer to see this as an opportunity for donors, including Canada, to work more closely with the Afghans, recognizing the need for international assistance in all forms as insurance for defence, security, economic support and democracy. It is also imperative to deploy all the tools at our disposal to ensure that future aid dollars are being spent effectively.