In need of a czar

By: Haroun Mir
March 23, 2008

More soldiers will die and more money will be wasted unless a development czar speeds up the pace of reform

NATO’s military commanders and experts blame a lack of development as the main cause for the deterioration of security in Afghanistan.

But one of the foremost impediments to development in Afghanistan is the lack of economic vision and coordination among different Afghan ministries and donor countries. The need to coordinate all international efforts to rebuild the Afghan economy and the country’s civil society is more important than strengthening the Afghan security forces.

Since the fall of the Taliban regime in 2001, the Afghan government and the international development agencies in Afghanistan have been unable to offer a realistic national development strategy. While coalition forces in Afghanistan try to bolster the Afghan security forces, development agencies from the same countries have yet to agree on coordinating their efforts.

Similarly, there are a least five Afghan ministries directly involved in development projects. None of them coordinates its work.

Clumsy reconstruction efforts end up as aberrations: building schools with no teachers or clinics without nurses and doctors because Provincial Reconstruction Teams (PRTs), tasked with building many of these schools and clinics, never liaised with Afghan agencies that train or provide staff.

The Afghan authorities have constructed electricity cables that run from the Uzbek border to Kabul, and yet the Uzbek government has do far not agreed to sell electricity to Afghanistan.

The January 2006 “Afghan compact”, approved at the London Conference on Afghanistan as a strategic development policy, was well presented, and donor countries pledged more money.

However, it failed to bring much needed results in terms of economic improvement for the majority of Afghans, who have remained stuck in the cycle of poverty.

In fact, Afghanistan’s National Development Strategy is written by the Western experts for the Western governments to extract more assistance for Afghanistan.

But it does not take into consideration all the non-economic factors, such as social, political, and security conditions, which have become major obstacles for economic development in the country.

The current National Development Strategy in Afghanistan is based on dual mandates: the development of a free market economy, and its integration into regional and international markets.

Meanwhile, national development strategies in successful developing countries have focused on poverty reduction, job creation, improving workers’ skills, and attracting foreign investors.

Which of these strategies should become the priority in Afghanistan?

Unfortunately, this question is debated by experts from donor countries and international multilateral organisations; it does not include Afghan players from civil society and the business community.

“Free market economy” has become the slogan of choice for Afghan officials in charge of economic policies. But in the absence of justice, rule of law, and enforcement of property rights, the result is not the common pursuit of happiness but rather lawless greed and mafia-like structures where bribery and corruption is rampant.

The “invisible hand” has yet to benefit most impoverished Afghans who are more aware of the very visible hands of corruption that heist from the public treasury.

Similarly, Afghan authorities, before achieving important structural economic reforms, have hastily engaged in multilateral trade agreements. The desire of government officials to satisfy the demands and requirements of international multilateral organisations such as the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank for policy adjustment has blinded them to the national economic priorities.

Like in many other poor countries, officials from these big international multilateral organisations, who have no clue about relevant local social and political issues, make important policy decisions for Afghanistan.

In the absence of indigenous policy experts and institutional mechanisms, Afghanistan has relied on the capacity of both the international multilateral institutions and foreign experts. Most of the time foreign institutions and experts look at successful policies in their own or other countries, and then try to copy and paste them onto Afghanistan.

Everyone in Afghanistan knows that good governance, justice, and the rule of law are key factors for stability in the country.

But, in the six years since the collapse of the Taliban, reforms have stalled. Many more Afghan and coalition forces will die, and plenty of Afghanistan's scarce financial resources will be wasted unless government officials replace empty slogans with real measures.

If they fail in this, they should not be surprised to see the will of coalition governments which support Afghanistan shrinking fast, especially in light of mounting pressure from their increasingly frustrated public.

In fact, alleviating poverty, ensuring political stability, and building a civil society in a war-torn and an under-developed country such as Afghanistan is daunting enough, even if there is a long-term commitment and lots of resources.

If a development czar, with ample experience, unfettered by bureaucracy and with the necessary authority, were to take charge of coordinating all national and international efforts to rebuild the Afghan economy, the pace of development might just improve fast enough for results to be seen, both by the donor countries and the Afghans they are supposed to help.

Haroun Mir is co-founder and deputy director of Afghanistan’s Center for Research and Policy Studies. 

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