The Chr. Michelsen Institute
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Post-war reconstruction efforts sometimes – but not always – focus on what is commonly called statebuilding, i.e. establishing an effective, central state that operates under the rule of positive law and in accordance with contemporary standards of transparency and accountability. Post-war reconstruction in Afghanistan is such a case. The focus of the US-led intervention in November 2001 was to destroy a “terrorist” sanctuary. Statebuilding was seen as instrument to deny the emergence of a future sanctuary. With previous state structures destroyed or neglected as a result of 25 years of war, general upheavals and intermittent international sanctions, the reconstruction program launched after the intervention consequently placed statebuilding at its core.
Policy perspectives
By early 2006, in policy circles as well as much of the policy-related literature, there was a recognition of a paradox in the Afghanistan reconstruction effort. Violence associated with the insurgency and counter-insurgency operations had worsened significantly since mid-2004. Issues of corruption and slow institution building marred the aid programs, as did regional inequities in distribution of aid funds and ostentatious display of the new riches acquired by a few, especially in Kabul, in contrast with extreme poverty of the vast majority of people. The government had failed to significantly expand its hold over the countryside, ruled by a variety of strongmen (military commanders, mullahs and tribal notables). Reports in March 2006 from the northern province of Balkh – the domain of the powerful self-styled general Abdul Rashid Dostum – claimed that the central government controlled only four official buildings in the entire province. The central government’s limited power was further demonstrated by its limited success in collecting taxes and near-total failure suppressing the poppy economy, estimated to be 60-70 % of GDP in 2005. Violent anti-foreign demonstrations and violence gave a sharp edge to populist rhetoric about unfulfilled expectations and belief that foreign aid organizations are “cows that drink their own milk”, as an Afghan saying goes.
The collective international response has been for more of the same– more aid, more institution building, and more foreign troops. Pledges of 4.5 billion dollars were made at the Tokyo conference in 2002, 8.2 billion in Berlin in 2004, and 10.4 billion in London in 2006, which was not even cast as a pledging conference. The programs of the Asian Development Bank and the World Bank, announced on the eve of the London conference, both emphasized more institution building. NATO had in late 2005 decided to increase its troops by around 6000, double the announced reduction of US forces around 3000. Deployment started in early 2006 and when completed would bring the total number of foreign troops in Afghanistan to around 30 000, a record high in the post-Taliban period.
The rationale for the steady increase is that international economic assistance and military presence have not yet reached the critical turning point, whether it is to overwhelm the illegal economy, create a decisive momentum in institution-building, or defeat the militant Islamists. The Afghanistan experts among scholars and diplomats in the United States mostly endorse this view. hile recognizing problems of nationalist reactions and legitimacy associated with large-scale international assistance, such aid is still seen as essential to provide the necessary “capital and coercion” required for statebuilding, as Barnett Rubin argues. The vast commissioned literature of evaluation reports, for its part, rarely examines the overall effects of assistance on the statebuilding enterprise itself, but focuses on a narrow range of impacts of particular projects or programs. Policy recommendations typically concern issues of project design, program coherence, coordination, monitoring, and the appropriate sequencing and targeting of aid. In this context, recommendations that donors use different channels of aid (as the World Bank long has argued), or to improve the effectiveness of aid by intrusive monitoring (as decided at the London conference), appear as relatively radical proposals for reform although in reality being merely an adjustment of modalities.
What is widely considered the international abandonment of Afghanistan following the Soviet withdrawal in 1989 forms a powerful backdrop for the present policy reasoning. The withdrawal of Soviet forces caused the Soviet-backed regime to crumble, while the mujahedin groups turned on each other, aided and abetted by Afghanistan’s neighbors. Neither the US nor the UN was willing to intervene to try to stop the violence, thereby opening the way for the Pakistan-supported Taliban movement to seize power. Superimposed on the present situation, this narrative understandably warns against the reduction or withdrawal of international assistance. Instead, a steadfast commitment and more involvement are recommended. “International” in this discourse is typically taken to mean activities undertaken under the auspices of the UN, the Western-led donor community, NATO or the US-led coalition forces. Western analysts often contrast this involvement with “opportunistic” intervention by neighboring states – notably Iran and Pakistan - that are seen as “ready to intervene” if “[the] international community ….reneges on its commitments to help secure and rebuild the country.”
This narrative has inhibited critical thinking about the fundamentals of the contemporary statebuilding project in Afghanistan. There is, for instance, little if any systematic comparison with failure of the Soviet intervention, although the escalating insurgency in spring 2006 makes for instructive comparisons (and is a subject of black humor among Afghans). The agenda and the policy dilemmas facing Moscow then resembled in some respects those facing the present international coalition. Possible imperial objectives aside, the Soviet government also sought to defeat Islamic militants, modernize Afghan society and build a strong central state that would create a Soviet-friendly order and stability in the country.
Only a few scholars initially questioned the principal strategies or premises of the statebuilding policy laid down in the Bonn Agreement. The Agreement and related resolutions were designed to establish an effective central state, characterized by “competence and integrity”, served by a single army and legitimized through democratic elections. This Weberian model, some critics argued, could not be realized in the Afghan context; the entire project was fundamentally unrealistic. International actors should instead work with existing power holders on the local level (“the warlords”) and attempt only modest change. As the aid program got underway and foreign troops continued offensive operations against the militant Taliban and their foreign supporters, new criticism appeared. Waging war while trying to build peace was fundamentally contradictory, it was argued, as the former objective undermined the latter. The reconstruction program had structural flaws that were likely to produce new conflict and “rogue provinces” as the magnitude of aid greatly exceeded local capacity and was distributed in ways that encouraged social and regional inequalities. These critics had their counterpart in the more general literature on the weaknesses of the “the liberal peace”, which relate to both the presumed unrealistic nature of the agenda and some of its structural aspects that are deemed likely to generate new conflict.
The present analysis builds in part on these critiques, but focuses more narrowly on the dependent nature of the statebuilding project. The rest of this chapter will examine, first, the structures of economic and military dependence on foreign assistance, and then assess the implications with respect to the legitimacy and sustainability of the Afghanistan statebuilding project. (read on...)