Development Issues in Afghanistan
Steve:
I don't have any answers on how to get to success in development. All I can offer are some observations about why it is appears to be such a challenge.
1. Intellectual Capital: A somewhat imperfect analogy that I like to use is that Afghanistan is like Cambodia in that an entire generation lost the opportunity for education. Outside of those who went into exile, there appears to be a large shortfall of university or even high-school educated persons among those Afghans who came of age in the 1980's and 1990's. This has obvious implications for governance and development efforts. It also doesn't match up well with our civilian and military modus operandi in Afghanistan, which I would characterize as seeking information dominance by creating ever larger and more complex bureaucratic structures. The international community can continue to pour bodies in to staff the working groups, coordination boards, and other bureaucratic entities but the Afghan Government doesn't have the bodies to do the same. Is there some way of making progress on development without heavy reliance on technocratic skills and bureaucratic structures? Maybe this is something that academics and think tanks should look at.
2. Centralization in Kabul: In addition to the obvious stovepipe problems created by placing line ministry representatives at the provincial level, centralizing decision making in Kabul founders on the fact that Afghans (and international community personnel) in Kabul have very little knowledge of what is actually going on in the provinces. Trying to run everything from Kabul is a show stopper in my opinion, but the Afghan elite (and the international community?) is fully committed to such an approach. I believe that development, governance, and security efforts will all fail unless the Afghan Government develops a construct that involves some sort of regional autonomy.
3. Targeting Assistance: During my time in Kandahar, the two greatest development priorities of Afghan authorities in Kandahar City were electrical power and potable water. Electricity was available to most inhabitants for only five-ten hours per week and potable water was an equally great shortfall. For reasons that are unclear to me, the international community seemed unable to provide any significant assistance in these two areas. Kandahar officials were acutely aware that they were risking popular support from a failure to deliver essential services and also understood that availability of power was a basic requirement for any sort of sustainable economic development. I am still puzzled about Kabul's apparent inability at the time to connect the dots.