Western governments must correct their mistakes in Afghanistan
January 28th London Conference may be last chance
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Eight years of Western aid efforts in Afghanistan have been ineffective. One of the reasons the Taliban are succeeding is because they have made fewer mistakes. The West needs to recognize its mistakes and it needs to use the Lancaster House conference in London to discuss and fix those mistakes. The following are four proposals:
1. A Professional Afghan Corps: Afghanistan needs a professional Afghan Corps composed of foreign aid officials and experts who are deployed for at least three-year tours. They need to be fluent in Dari or Pashto before they arrive. These officials must also receive paramilitary training and be provided with weapons so that they can work and function in the countryside. They cannot continue to sit in Kabul or move around the country only when supported by private security forces. This author is willing to be part of that Corps and there are many others out there who would also.
2. Reconstruction Officials Must Like Afghans: Since writing for the Kabul Press?, this author has been contacted by U.S. officials and PRT members serving in Afghanistan. It is plainly evident from their e-mails that a percentage of them simply dislike Afghans and do not want to be in Afghanistan. This is consistent with this author’s experiences while working for the U.S. State Department in 2008. He met U.S. diplomats deploying to Iraq who despised Arabs. They were going to Iraq solely because their one-year assignment in a war zone would be good for their careers. The U.S. and other governments need to begin screening out these people. They have no place in Afghanistan.
3. Long Term Humanitarian Aid Must Be a Priority: The West needs to recognize that Afghanistan is in a humanitarian crisis. The United Nations’ World Food Programme estimates that 1/3 of Afghans do not get enough food to lead healthy lives, with another 1/3 of the population living on the border of “food insecurity.” This after eight years of Western aid! USAID, for example, devotes little attention to this issue. It seems to be focused almost exclusively on developmental aid. Trying to encourage exports from a country where people are going hungry seems crazy. One cannot “win the hearts and minds” of people whose stomachs are empty. Part of the problem is that with one-year tours, officials want to leave with “successes” on their performance evaluations, so they emphasize “quick impact projects” (i.e., lots of small, ad hoc, uncoordinated, minor impact projects). This is no way to help build a country.
4. A Credible “Dissent Channel” Must Be Established: Wars are often won or lost depending on which side adapts, evolves, reacts and innovates quicker. At this stage in the Afghanistan conflict, it is the Taliban and al-Qaeda which are taking the lead in these areas. Flexibility requires that the West encourage dissent, opposing viewpoints and criticism. If programs are not working or if officials need to be replaced, that information must rapidly flow up the chain of command. Alas, Western Government’s such as the United States, actively discourage such criticism. Loyalty and silence are prized. It seems that senior officials within the U.S. State Department would rather lose the war than permit dissent. The U.S. State Department “officially” has a Dissent Channel.
This author worked for the State Department in 2008, and was neither advised about it nor instructed on how to access that Channel. Statistics reveal that the number of users has declined virtually year since it was instituted in 1971. It appears that only one person may have used it in all of 2009. Susan Johnson, President of the American Foreign Service Association, told Nicholas Kralev of the Washington Times on September 16, 2009, that the U.S. State Department’s Dissent Channel is virtually dead. “People don’t seem to believe in it anymore.” She said. Part of the reason for its decline is that the State Department is notorious for retaliating against dissenters.
The other is that the Department is not receptive to criticism. The result is that State Department failures are rarely exposed and State Department mistakes are rarely fixed. As a result, every year al-Qaeda seems to grow stronger and seems to spread to a new country, while the State Department slowly plods onward. It reacts and responds to events, always one step behind. The State Department’s Foreign Service has grown more loyal (i.e., silent), but less effective. The London Conference must address these issues.
photo by Basir Seerat http://afghaneye.blogspot.com/
Forum posts
1 February 2010, 13:05, by miru
Mr. Nasuti is withdrawing his eyes from the real problem by focusing on common issues of aid. Mistakes of aid are a dime a dozen around the world.
What the US has been making are not "mistakes" but war crimes. Because the imperialistic US wants to colonialize Afghanistan, it has been invading Afghanistan whose people have never committed terrorism to American people in the US, in spite of its saying "self-defense." (Today, the US justification for military invasion, "women’s rights" is followed by "poverty.")
Ineffectiveness of Western aid efforts in Afghanistan is nothing special. Because the US regards itself as a military occupier, it has been despising "subject" Afghan people, and has been attempting to bribe the Afghan Resistance with "aid." Without mentioning USAID, both PRT and DDR tied to military occupation are not reconstruction assistance. If aid is not neutral, it tears up a recipient country and brings civil war.
Only because of colonialism, which makes occupiers give free rein to their desires, they spread corruption, ignore their "mistakes", and devote little attention to Afghan people’s struggle against hard living and for independence.
2 March 2010, 19:28, by Laura R. Standley
The United States does not wish to colonize Afghanistan. The United States has been conducting military operations to capture Osama bin Ladin and any al Qaeda remnants and leave a stable Afghan government in its wake. Unstable nations become breeding grounds for extremism, such as the rise of Hitler after World War I, when the French and British demanded reparations from Germany, which destroyed its economy and allowed the Nazis to gain power.
The issue of women’s rights relates to the restrictions placed upon the movement of women by the Talibans which can lead to circumstances of family starvation in the case of women with no males available in the household. How would they get food? How would they get water if the home lacked indoor plumbing? How would a woman get medical care for herself or a sick child in a household with no male escort available? In such cases, if the all men leave a household due to death or war, they leave the family to starve and die. Healthy women also bear healthier children.
Foreign aid is ineffective because it doesn’t address the fundamental cause of the problem; the Durand Line. It’s not a border at all, so much as a raw edge that threatens to unravel both Afghanistan and Pakistan. The United States can’t just redraw the map, so we are stuck trying to defend an indefensible staus quo.
11 February 2010, 13:07, by اپریل
how west going to correct there mistake in a country who they are burn it and kill thousand . against all this barbaric war you ask again western military to correct there image front of afghan and world people ? i have question . are you nuts or idiot or an f*** ass H*** . you kill my people for 30 years and you ask me to late them to correct them self . if your father shoot and died in front of your eye by an American or German military and your to Little to take any action against them ... then what . we have to marshal court them in between people of Afghanistan and shoot one one of them in day light . accept Canadian .