DEVELOPMENT-AFGHANISTAN: A Lot of Pledges But Very Little Aid

By Sanjay Suri Reprint | | Print |

Sanjay Suri

LONDON, Jun 20 2002 (IPS) - Afghanistan is getting only a small fraction of the billions of dollars of aid figures announced for its reconstruction, Hafiz Pasha, assistant secretary-general of the United Nations Development Programme told IPS Thursday.

More than five billion dollars of aid for Afghanistan was pledged over a five-year period at a meeting of donors in Tokyo in January. Of this an amount of 1.7 billion dollars was pledged for this year. But Afghanistan will get only about 150 million dollars in aid for reconstruction this year.

Pasha explained how this aid is getting whittled down in an interview to IPS at the UNDP office in London. The 1.7 billion dollars pledged for this year was followed up by firm commitments of only 1.1 billion dollars.

A total of 900 million dollars has come in by way of actual disbursements of which about 70 per cent has gone into humanitarian relief such as providing food and to facilitate the return of refugees. That leaves about 250 million dollars for actual reconstruction aid this year.

Of this relatively small amount, a substantial portion is going towards paying salaries for government staff. Another large component of this is for providing security services around the country. That leaves an amount that is only about 150 million dollars for educational and vocational development, health and nutrition, and for social programmes.

This is nowhere near what Afghanistan needs, said Pasha. For its reconstruction the UNDP believes Afghanistan needs a minimum of one billion dollars a year.

Pasha declined to comment on the circumstances that had meant that the 1.7 billion dollars of aid pledged this year has been cut to nearly half that figure by way of payments that have actually come in.

“A lot of the pledges related to the five-year period,” Pasha said. “A lot of donors are still working on projects,” he said.

One difficulty with the low rate of disbursements so far has been that “the institutional framework is not there for absorbing aid,” Pasha said. With a new government in place and progress being made on the development front, aid programmes for reconstruction can now pick up, he said.

The setting up of the Afghanistan Assistance Co-ordination Authority has helped speed up disbursements, Pasha said. Reconstruction will also be speeded up with the setting up of such new bodies as the Recovery and Employment Afghanistan Programme (RAP), he said.

Reconstruction will also be speeded up now following adoption of the National Development Framework in Afghanistan, Pasha said. “Now the likelihood of more commitments being made is higher, and the conversion into disbursements would be higher,” he said.

But even the relatively small amount of aid going in for reconstruction is more than what some critics have thought. “The bottomline is that aid flow for reconstruction is not as bad as perceived, but it is slower than originally anticipated,” Pasha said.

Pasha said that the humanitarian aid component had shown substantial results. “Since March more than a million Afghan refugees have gone back,” he said. Much of the recent migration back has come from Pakistan, he said.

Pasha said that aid efforts have had limited reach because of security concerns. “Without security outside Kabul, it is difficult to provide significant reconstruction activity,” he said.

A major new programme will be the creation of a police force in Afghanistan, Pasha said. Funds for training and for equipment for this project have been offered by Germany, he said. There is also a need for an Afghan military force for which de-mobilisation of armed groups will be needed, he said. The creation of the police force will come under Law and Order Trust Fund agreed earlier in Geneva, Pasha said.

The UNDP is taking on a larger role in co-ordinating aid efforts under way. With assistance from the governments of Italy, the U.S. and the Netherlands, the UNDP is setting up a Donor Assistance Database to track aid flow into Afghanistan.

The database will help to assess how much assistance is being provided to various development programmes. The database will be posted on its Internet site. The UNDP says the database will help ensure an “Afghan-led” vision for development and reconstruction.

The UNDP is also looking down the line at development of business opportunities for the private sector in Afghanistan, Pasha said.

The unfolding of a new political process in Afghanistan will facilitate a speeding up of reconstruction in Afghanistan, Pasha said.