Creating a development framework free from corruption requires clear rules and boundaries. The current situation in Afghanistan means that the international community should reconsider its goals for Afghanistan, how achievable they are and, most importantly, the benchmarks for progress. The Afghanistan Compact provides few concrete targets, almost no prioritization or sequencing, and does not correspond to the realities present in Afghanistan.
Start At The Top
The international community must show more spine and demand that the Karzai government curtail corrupt practices:
1) President Karzai should relinquish all personal ties to the drugs trade and corrupt officials. Six years after the initial invasion, the president’s younger brother Ahmad Wali Karzai is the head of the provincial council in Kandahar—and heavily involved in the region’s drug trade.
2) The Karzai government must also be pressured to take the necessary steps in order for district council elections to be held across the country. A third of the seats in the Meshrano Jirga (Afghanistan’s “Upper House” or “Senate”) are still filled by transitional members—an open door for corruption .
3) Without a return to Taliban-era repression, a highly centralized government will not work for Afghanistan’s fractured society. Political parties, excluded from parliamentary elections by Karzai in 2005, must be brought back into the electoral system; the links between the legislative and executive branches must be strengthened; more attention must be paid to input from civil society to foster the growth of issues-based politics.
Make It Effective
The international community must speak and act with one voice in order to pressure the current regime to make concessions: there should be unity of command not only for the armed forces, but also for development agencies. There is a dire need for more detailed oversight of aid activity, aid coverage and the actual effect aid and development projects have on the ground.
At present, only around 15% of the development assistance for Afghanistan is directly channeled through the government. Increasing this figure could provision an incentive structure for the central government to address corruption. Access to additional funds, and thus capital for development projects, would help to underpin its legitimacy. Should corruption stay the same or worsen, there would be a strong case for channeling even more development funding through NGOs and development agencies operating on the ground in the country.
Think Local, Act Local
Unless the international community tackles corruption at the local level simultaneously, a reformed Afghan government would quickly find itself isolated and powerless where it really counts—the countryside. In a fractured society still heavily based on tribal dynamics, it is local representation that will confer legitimacy upon Afghanistan’s state institutions in the eyes of most of the populace. To tackle the lower-level corruption that drains the average Afghani on a daily basis, a map of who actually governs where and what services they provide on a local level must be established.
It will also be necessary to gauge local perceptions and conduct polls that go below the national or district level. The international community should not kid itself: such polls may produce results that will not always be to its liking—such as for example in areas where insurgent forces or the Taliban are actually shown to enjoy popular support by the local populace and may have to be incorporated into the nation-building process.
Current aid activity, military strategies and political/diplomatic drives by the international community all point to an ever-recurring fallacy: local policy in the third world is made in distant, Western capitals. If there is one lesson from the past that needs to be applied to all international activity in Afghanistan, it is this: any goals we have set for ourselves must be workable through local existing Afghani societal and political structures. Maybe the term “nation-guiding”, rather than “nation-building” comes closer to what is needed.
Niklas Keller holds an MA in International Relations and Diplomacy from the School of Oriental and African Studies, London. Before joining the Atlantic Community in May of 2007, he worked in program management for a number of NGOs and as a Research Assistant for United Nations University, Tokyo.
Related Materials From the Atlantic Community:
- Markus Kaim on Expanding ISAF, Ending OEF in Afghanistan
- Jaap de Hoop Scheffer on Afghanistan: The Way Ahead
- The Atlantic Community suggests How the EU Could Do More in Afghanistan
- Thomas Speckmann on Why America Wants to Iraqize Afghanistan
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