AFGHANISTAN: Political Errors Could Undermine Aid

By Sanjay Suri Reprint | | Print |

Sanjay Suri

LONDON, Feb 2 2006 (IPS) - The ten billion dollars pledged in aid for Afghanistan sounds like good news for the country, but some experts fear it could be undermined by political misdirection.

”It sounds good on paper, but our concern is that this is going to be undermined by the direction that geopolitics is taking in the country,” Emmanuel Reinert, executive director of The Senlis Council, a drug policy think tank told IPS.

A military solution to drugs ”is going to undermine the sovereignty of Afghanistan,” he said. ”That could lead to major unrest, and all the money pledged – if ever delivered – could be for nothing if this is going on.”

Afghanistan has seen some dramatic difference between pledges and delivery before. And such delivery that is made gets whittled down along the way.

More than five billion dollars of aid for the reconstruction of Afghanistan was pledged over a five-year period at a meeting of donors in Tokyo in January of 2002. Of this an amount of 1.7 billion dollars was pledged for that year. But Afghanistan got only about 150 million dollars in aid for reconstruction.

The 1.7 billion dollars pledged for the 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 percent went for humanitarian relief such as providing food and to facilitate the return of refugees.

That left about 250 million dollars for actual reconstruction aid this year. After paying for salaries, only about 150 million dollars were left for educational and vocational development, health and nutrition, and for social programmes.

More development aid flowed into Afghanistan in the years following, but the aid that reaches ground level is only a fraction of what is pledged and then delivered, and that is likely to be no different with the pledges made through the ‘Afghan Compact’ as the donors meeting this week in London was called.

Of the aid received in the past, Afghans themselves have got to handle only a fraction. Most of it went to Western non-governmental organisations and companies from donor countries engaged in development projects.

”When you go to the real Afghanistan, you will see that the money is not going to those who need it, the farmers, families, rural people,” Reinert said. ”Afghan development policy is a myth, out there you hardly see anything.”

Afghan officials have been protesting against aid in this form. A joint Afghan-United Nations commission will seek to ensure that Afghans have more say where the aid goes. But the aid package is likely to be concentrated on security and poppy eradication, and on supporting education to prevent another generation of terrorists coming up.

Afghanistan produces 90 percent of the world’s opium and heroin, and this is certain to present the biggest challenge for Western influence in Afghanistan – and the most likely source of conflict. This is the one area the West wants to supervise, rather than leave to Afghan authorities.

”Money should be used for policies and in ways that help the Afghan government help itself,” Reinert said.

The aid being offered to Afghanistan is tied to a dangerous policy of poppy eradication, he said. ”The new money should be used to support the Afghans to make good use of the opium produced, not to wipe out the cultivation.”

The aid pledges come in the wake of growing militancy by the Taliban or Taliban-like groups in the south of Afghanistan. The Senlis Council says forced eradication of poppy could exacerbate that unrest.