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A call to cut Afghan development aid
Associated Press - March 3, 2011
Bradley Klapper, Washington – By pumping more than $100 million into a hydropower plant, the United States sought to improve the lives of Afghans and win the hearts and minds of tribesmen and farmers who might otherwise turn to the Taliban insurgency.
Instead, a prominent outside Pentagon adviser argues, the bungled boondoggle ended up funding the insurgents while doing little to help the United States end the war and bring troops home.
The story of the Kajaki dam, the largest US aid project in Afghanistan, is emblematic of the US government's failing approach to development aid in Afghanistan, according to a policy brief by Mark Moyar, a former professor at the Marine Corps University and frequent consultant to US and international forces in Afghanistan and the Mideast.
Development aid "should be slashed immediately," Moyar concludes. Less money should be accompanied by a narrower focus away from common good programs designed to lift the whole of Afghan society and accompanied by clearer security objectives behind each program, Moyar said.
Moyar's critique of the US approach to aid and development in the nearly 10-year-old war will appear this week in an online scholarly publication, Small Wars Journal, which is widely read by military officers and academics.
He argues that grand gestures such as the dam have flopped, largely because development spending does little to increase popular support during an insurgency. Half the electricity from the project in the volatile Helmand province goes to Taliban territory, enabling America's enemies to issue power bills and grow the poppies that finance their insurgency, he says.
The assessment challenges basics of counterinsurgency theory as the spring fighting season in Afghanistan approaches and American commanders claim tactical gains ahead of the planned start of a US withdrawal in July.
It is written by a well-regarded counterinsurgency theorist who asserts that money and good will – the currency of counterinsurgency – can turn out to be counterproductive. In some ways, it surprisingly echoes Afghan President Hamid Karzai's sentiment that the volume of US contract cash and development money fuels corruption and delivers as much harm as good when directed to a place where wealth is so scarce without it.
Despite spending nearly $23 billion on development and humanitarian aid programs in Afghanistan since 2001, there is no easy way to measure the effectiveness of the effort.
Supporters of programs to build grass-roots institutions say some of the fruit of that work may not be immediately apparent. They note that democratization and the development of a strong civil society are important to bringing stability to a country where weak governance allowed Al Qaeda to establish bases and launch the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. It also can secure a long-term American ally in a region made precarious by Islamic extremism, a potentially nuclear-powered Iran and another fragile state in Pakistan.
The Kajaki dam illustrates some problems that beset aid efforts. Repairs were delayed repeatedly by fighting and the difficulty in securing roads long enough to deliver supplies, and the Taliban has exacted taxes on farmers who use the electricity and cut lines in areas where people support the government. Fuel shortages are common, while costs have ballooned.
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