Steve,
Yes, I see the point. This is why I was asking earlier what the purpose of the exercise is, which of course revolves around where it takes place. M-A's talk of trucking water in seems aimed at relief efforts such as that going on in Haiti; if we discuss Afghanistan we are largely limited to assessing what a military force can accomplish. Seems to me that until we narrow down the problem and clarify what we seek to accomplish and where, the conversation becomes almost impossibly general.Originally Posted by Steve the Planner
The problem with training soldiers in delivering water systems is that not every village needs one. Some may need a bridge, or an irrigation system, or any number of other things. Obviously it's not practical to try and train soldiers in the entire spectrum of development services delivery. Possibly it would be best to people going into the field to have some basic training in diagnostics - which in most cases comes down to asking people and sorting self-serving requests from genuine needs - and providing some sort of centralized technical capacity that the people in the field can tap into for whatever expertise their area happens to need.
I'm not entirely convinced that it's a good idea to undertake development projects in an active combat zone. In most cases these are driven less by development priorities than by a sort of thinly concealed bribery: we'll build you something if you don't shoot at us, or if you'll stop supporting our enemies. I'm not averse to a bit of bribery in the right time and place; sometimes it works, and what works is useful. One must be careful in applying that particular tool, though, as it may not always accomplish what we seek to accomplish. In the southern Philippines, for example, American-driven projects have left the Muslim populace with a much improved opinion of Americans, but have had little or no impact on their perception that the Philippine government would prefer to see them all dead in a ditch and is likely to go straight back to neglecting and abusing them as soon as the Americans are gone. This is the perception that drives the insurgency, and it's a difficult perception for Americans to address, since it's true. It will remain true even if we build roads and wells, and everyone in the picture knows it.
In an area that's actively or passively supporting insurgency, simply building projects is not likely to have much impact on that support. The key here is to identify what motivates that support, particularly if there is some particular local grievance that might possibly be addressed. If the people of a village see that the provincial government or HN military apparatus is dominated by a rival group and is likely to stomp them at the earliest opportunity, building them a well is not going to bring them into the fold. If the people of a village believe that the Americans will soon be leaving, that the Afghan Government will tumble when they do, and that the Taliban will then stomp whoever helped the Americans, building a well won't change that equation. Not to say it's a bad thing: if the goal is simply to provide clean water, that's achievable. If the goal is to win support, that's a different story.
In an active conflict zone, people are likely to be less concerned with progress than with survival, especially if the see their survival threatened. The first thing that has to be addressed is the threat. Development is much more and issue when the security situation improvesd to the point where day to day survival at least is relatively certain.
Steve
(Sometimes it seems that everyone in this discussion is Steve; I'm irresistably reminded of that Monty Python skit where everybody is named Bruce...)
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