Afghanistan: More aid, more personnel?
Over 2006 and 2007, Senlis, a European-based think tank with offices in Ottawa, Kandahar, and Lashkar Gul, has been documenting aid progress in Afghanistan–and saying that it’s been inadequate. In a November 2007 report, the report stated:
The depressing conclusion is that, despite the vast injections of international capital flowing into the country, and a universal desire to ‘succeed’ in Afghanistan, the state is once again in serious danger of falling into the hands of the Taliban. Where implemented, international development and reconstruction efforts have been underfunded and failed to have a significant impact on local communities’ living conditions, or improve attitudes towards the Afghan Government and the international community.
The report goes through the mission-numbing restrictions of several states, the troop withdrawals both extant and upcoming, and concludes that (rightly) more troops are needed in order to accomplish security. They report that the U.S. has 36% of the troops in Afghanistan and is one of the six states which gives their ISAF troops some operational mobility. However, according to some formula they have worked out, the U.S. is actually contributing the least ratio of troops–by GDP per capita. I guess they can use that as the denominator if they want to, but it wouldn’t have been my choice. Using this method means that France would have to send over 4,000 more troops and the U.S. close to 17,000. (p.59) They also recommend more soldierly participation by Muslim states.
International Aid
Furthermore, the Taliban are winning the grass-roots efforts on the ground, which means that more aid money is needed. Now this is a number that I might tie to GDP–and on p. 73 of the report, there is an interesting bar graph that shows Afghanistan receiving less money per capita for aid then Timor-L’Este, Bosnia-Herzegovina, or Sierra Leone. And of the aid pledged by donor countries, about USD 20 million, only 8 million has actually been expended. (p. 75). Currently Afghanistan is number 174 out of 178 in the Human Development Index.
The next bar graph shows the way that military spending outweighs aid assistance, with a distinct disproportionality in U.S. spending. (p. 76). However, this graph does not take into account the coordination-of-effort/free rider problem–that the U.S. may be paying the bills on joint operations. It is also not clear if some of the military spending is actually spent on community development, such as the impromptu health clinics, et cetera, which have been reported here or elsewhere. Nevertheless, the point is well made–that something beyond the guns is required in order to set security.
On December 14, Canada’s went on the offensive after a new installment of the reports evaluated their contributions to Afghanistan aid efforts. Three Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA) officials– publicly contested the report findings–a head of the Afghanistan effort and an aid officer that has worked in Afghanistan. Previously, CIDA officials had not made much comment on the Senlis reports. Specifically, they said that Senlis was not portraying actual conditions, and that people in Afghanistan were getting a lot of food aid. There may be a lot wrong with the Senlis report, but I don’t think there’s that much wrong with it.
Further Reading
Senlis, November 2007, Afghanistan on the Brink (pdf, 113 pages)
Photos: UK’s Ministry of Defence; graphics.cursor.com
December 18th, 2007 at 7:05 am
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