Economics and Irregular Warfare

[vertnyc]

Concur with western training tailored for something way more developed than Afghanistan. Please do send me any good info.

In response to the questions:

1. What do these villagers produce? Of that, what do they consume locally, and what do they trade with other villages, towns or cities?
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In 1 district, villagers produce only poppy. However they do not own the land. Land owners live in Kandahar City. In another district, villagers grow tobacco and wheat, tobacco to be sold in Pakistan. Wheat for consumption. Haven't really seen intra-village trade, but most goods go to KC or through Pakistan to Chaman.

2. What do they consume? How much of that is produced locally, and how much comes from other villages, towns or cities?
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They consume what they grow. Insufficient data for other question. Which is really a point I'd like to highlight that it is the lack of data such as this which makes decisions hard.

3. How do they exchange value? How much of this local trade is based on currency, and what currency is it? How much local economic activity is based on barter?
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Haven't seen anything based on barter yet, near KC, they use Afghani. Some contractors take dollars. Near the border, 50% they use rupees or whatever the currency Pakistan uses, and 50% afghani.

4. What do or could the locals produce that could go to a larger market? What do they need in the way of additional infrastructure to produce it?
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In Arghandab, pomegranates. They need everything on the value chain for pomegranates in terms of infrastructure.

5. Are there any micro-loan programs in place to finance starting or increasing production of goods for local consumption or trade? Why not?
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USAID has a program called WOCCU. CERP has $500 micro grants. We are not allowed to give micro grants at this point of time due to some people in the unit not liking that idea.

[Elric]

The CDCs of the NSP are intact and useful on a case to case basis. So far, not much movement in our districts. A little more activity for DDAs, but no concrete results. Trying to explore ASOP but I heard there is an artificial turf war between ASOP/NSP. NSP "didn't work" in Helmand, so ASOP went. NSP works in some parts of Kandahar...but no ASOP here...yet.

USAID is trying to get CERP to pay for their projects so I guess we do live in an upside down world.

Agree on case by case basis. The Herat governor was working on getting the PDC to create a realistic PDP. The participants had been asking for things of less utility than were suitable for the PDP. In the committee's defense, a big issue was the GIRoA funding for the NSP. If you don't expect the money to show up, why plan?

Welcome to alphabet soup. My pipe dream was to "partner" with the PDC or DDA (or even CDCs) in order to fill the supportable items on the PDP/District Dvelopment Plan (if there is such a thing). Sort of the US stepping in to fill specific items off the NSP that the GIRoA didn't fund. The twist is the specific items fit with the effort to support the GIRoA (or whatever term you would like). This technique of aligning with the PDP/DDP sure helps with getting involvement from the GIRoA folks. If the CDCs are well thought of, aligning to that plan may be useful, as the CDCs are supposedly more inclusive than the village leadership. Are the CDCs a way to get the villagers some self-governing experience?

Are the DoS and USAID folks helping with involving local government with your efforts? As an aside, Kabul did not like microgrants as being "susceptible to corruption". What do they thing Afghanistan is, the 1950s with Beaver Cleaver?

Still does not address Terms of Use that the end user will get, as we cannot guarantee that whatever we build will be used according to the contract. Having the GIRoA as the maintainer of a completed project is dependent on what needs to be done. Karzai wanted a district hospital down in Shindand, looking at the plans from Kabul, I noticed two 40T fuel tanks for the generators (power lines from Herat don't run far south). If we build a nice hospital that has no power due to GIRoA not funding the fuel it needs, was it a good thing to even start construction?

Interesting event out in eastern Ghor province, I think the Lithuanian PRT funded the building materials for a school in Laal (?) district. The tribe built it, and it was theirs, no fooling. Probably cinderblock and a poured cement pad.

We did a province wide buy of wheat seed, fertilizer, and fruit tree saplings for Herat province ($1.09M) using the province's Co-Op framework. I had the Herat Ag Chief work the amounts, come up with the distribution plan, and develop the SoW for the contract. What I wish we had was an economic ad visor to help us develop a sustained plan to develop agriculture (nice summary earlier). What were the impacts of cornering the wheat seed market, how was the harvested seed to be used (on-farm or marketed), how was it to be transported to market on the (rather pitiful) roads....