Afghanistan and Central Asia

Afghanistan is figuring in the news these days as U.S. presidential candidates call attention to it; as Mr. Karzai was invited to Camp David for strategy sessions; and as more hostage-taking incidents indicate a decreased security.  

Yet in today’s RFE/RL Newsline, the U.S. will be slashing aid to Afghanistan by over 50%.  Here is the article in full:

U.S. ASSISTANCE TO AFGHANISTAN TO DROP OVER 50 PERCENT.
The U.S. State Department said on August 2 that the United States will decrease its assistance to Afghanistan from $10.1 billion in 2007 to $4.7 billion in 2008, Pajhwak Afghan News reported on August 3. U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for South and Central Asia Richard Boucher said the high funding in 2007 was an exceptional circumstance, intended to provide a “jump-start” to certain development projects and other critical programs, including training for the police and military.
U.S. support amounted to approximately $3.3 billion in 2006 and increased to $10.1 billion due to the supplemental funding for kick-off activities, Boucher said. “Even when we drop back in 2008 to $4.7 billion, we’re still 50 percent higher,” he reasoned. JC

Three things I don’t think make sense about this:  a. cutting funding, for the first; b. failing to examine the patterns of funding for increased efficiency and appropriate help; and c. pulling back at a time when the U.S. is asking for stepped-up commitment in the area from others.  And last week, the UN High Commission for Refugees sent out a warning notice on the dire straits of many Afghanistan refugees who need to be re-integrated into Afghan society.

This weekend, Afghanistan Watch posted an op-ed from two aid workers returned from Afghanistan. (The article in full is at the post).   The op-ed said that the largest danger in Afghanistan was neither violence nor poppy fields, but “the unrealized hopes of Afghanistan’s citizens.”  These two authors are from Mercy Corps, a great organization which has the capacity to work with smaller communities on a variety of programs.  In my own research in another venue, Mercy Corps worked with community leaders and citizens to decide first-what kind of facility they most needed-and then helped them obtain it.  Their operation puts people in ownership of their own aid projects: not just developing a medical center, for instance, but providing training for civic leaders on how to assess hospital care and order supplies, create a management board, train and attract medical personnel, and so forth.  These are the kinds of projects that Afghanistan needs if it is going to gain hope.  And there are relatively calm parts of Afghanistan where such reconstruction projects could take root.

About 18 months ago, a report from the RAND corporation said that we were losing Afghanistan’s citizens by failing to provide aid in terms of children’s health and basic needs, and it was a main contributor to security failure in the state.

I see these budget decisions with profound regret.  But my regret surely compares in no way to how Afghanistan citizens must be viewing these non-strategic developments.

Mercy Corps program 2001

This entry was posted on Monday, August 6th, 2007 at 11:32 am and is filed under Afghanistan, Security, Public Health. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.