Three reports issued this week highlight the ways in which the outside world is failing the Afghan people and predict that if the international community does not improve its performance, Afghanistan will tumble back into dissent and chaos and the forces of bigotry will once again seize control.
Perhaps the most damning of the findings comes from the aid agency Oxfam which warns that not only has much of the promised aid been not been delivered to Afghanistan but that which has is often wasted. The loss stems from poor project coordination, the engagement of expensive outside consultants and the high prices being charged by international contractors. The report also says that some aid is also being lost when siphoned off by corrupt local politicians and officials. Though it is right to condemn dishonest Afghans, Oxfam does not go on to make the point that the behavior of outside consultants is equally corrupt.
The rebuilding and economic advancement of Afghanistan was not supposed to turn into a payola for international firms. It was supposed to give Afghans the first chance in decades to build some stability and prosperity into their lives. That is not happening. And because it is not happening, Afghans struggling to feed their families are turning increasingly to the warlords over their communities and in agricultural areas are cultivating the opium poppy.
As despair and crime take a deeper hold, so will lawlessness and so will the task facing the Afghan security forces and the NATO troops alongside them. It is the security situation which one of the American reports highlights, warning it is deteriorating because of a lackluster military performance by NATO. Only a few of the NATO contingents are actually engaged in any fighting. Many member countries have only supplied troops on the basis that they will be posted to provinces as yet untouched by violence or will be used only for training and supply duties.
Much of this disapproval stems from the view in Europe that Afghanistan is an American project. The widespread condemnation of Bush’s blunders in Iraq is also applied, falsely, to what is seen as another US-led operation in Afghanistan.
Such an analysis is both very dangerous and very wrong. Everything that has happened in Afghanistan has been done under UN mandates. And in the key two loya jurgas and the presidential and parliamentary elections, major political progress was made and great hopes were raised among Afghans. The international community had promised effective financial and technical aid in great quantities. Those hopes are now being dashed and Afghans being increasingly tempted to find their own solutions by themselves.
Both militarily and economically, Afghanistan is being betrayed, thanks to broken donor promises, cowardly governments and the incompetent mishmash being made of implementing much of the aid that has been delivered. It is shameful.
