First, the arbitrary content of news reports and commentaries only adds fuel to a political blame-game among the very key stakeholders, who must work together as partners to address Afghanistan’s multidimensional problems. For example, the frequent criticism of widespread corruption in the Afghan government is hardly helpful. It only pits the international community against the Afghan government, preventing both sides from finding a durable solution to the problem of corruption. Indeed, however, the problem of corruption must first be contextually defined or else it remains a buzzword, used and abused by anyone wanting to vent frustration and shift blame to the Afghan government.
On the Afghan side, corruption is a systemic problem of weak governance due to a lack of international investment in building the democratic institutions of “checks and balances” in the Afghan state. Without capacity and resources, Afghan state institutions cannot execute their constitutional responsibilities to provide people with such integrated services as security, rule of law, social protection, and a sustainable livelihood. Of course, a police officer and a judge, both of whom constitute the eyes and arms of any government respectively, would hardly be effective in their jobs, if they were not trained, equipped, and paid adequately. If this problem chronically persists, the incentive for most law enforcement officials to stay with the government, in an environment of pervasive insecurity and poverty, will become one of engaging in bribery to satisfy the basic survival needs of their families and their future.
On the international side, corruption means spending tens of billions of dollars to prop up parallel structures for unsustainable service delivery in Afghanistan. As the audit reports of the United States Congress and other oversight bodies of the donor community demonstrate, much of donor-related corruption involves the use of private contractors and multiple sub-contractors, each of which skims off between 20 to 80 percent of the donated funds to Afghanistan. The continued channeling of aid resources through such parallel structures as predatory contractors, NGOs that never go away, and a spoiled family of the United Nations agencies undermines the very Afghan state institutions, which must be built to restore statehood in Afghanistan. After all, the country has a resilient and enterprising nation, but is in dire need of a functioning state.
Second, the public in Afghanistan and the donor countries are easily misled, when all they read in the papers or watch on TV is a heavy dose of sensationally negative news about every aspect of international engagement in Afghanistan. Afghans are gradually led to believe in conspiracy theories, asking why the best armed and equipped forces of more than 40 countries have failed to defeat a weak insurgency without a national cause. By contrast, the taxpayers in donor countries may wonder where and how their tax monies have been spent, if the life of an ordinary Afghan has not changed much, ten years after the fall of the Taliban. And they can hardly accept the tragedy of losing their sons and daughters in a far-flung nation, if they are not shown the inextricable link between their own homeland security and stability in Afghanistan.
Third, indeed, it is the Taliban and their supporters in the region that stand to gain from a continued miscommunication of facts and mismanagement of expectations in Afghanistan. And in the uncontrollable battle of perceptions, the Afghan people and their international supporters stand to lose, even though the big war of ideas for restoring peace, liberty and pluralism in Afghanistan is clearly theirs to win.
However, it is not too late for the media to change course and move in the right direction to call spade a spade in Afghanistan. Adhering to the principles of good journalism, the news reports out of Afghanistan must always reflect two indisputable facts.
First, Afghanistan is very much a work in progress. Much progress has been made over the past ten years, but far more work remains to be done to consolidate and deepen the institutions of democratic governance in Afghanistan. Corruption — like elsewhere, including in the developed world — will not disappear in the country. But the problem will incrementally diminish, as Afghanistan develops holistically, indeed, by going through the same different stages of development, which developed and developing countries have over the course of several decades, if not centuries. Once the status of Afghanistan as a work in progress is accepted, genuine efforts must be made to learn from the mistakes of the past 10 years to “do no harm” by enabling Afghanistan to grow a productive economy. And when this process slowly takes off, the resilience and enterprising genius of the Afghan people will help deliver their country from its past miseries, wrought by bad neighbors and the Cold War politics.
Second, parallel to the acceptance of the above fact, the external problem of insecurity in the form of a weak but destructive insurgency in Afghanistan must be forcefully acknowledged, because an unstable Afghanistan can destabilize the region and threaten international security. Key actors in the international system, led by the United States, must pursue a collective long-term policy of helping Pakistan end institutional support for extremism and terrorism in the region. When this genuinely happens, Afghanistan will automatically be secure and soon on its way towards full integration with the rest of the democratic and free world.
M. Ashraf Haidari is the Deputy Assistant National Security Advisor of Afghanistan, who formerly served as the Chargé d’Affaires and Political Counselor of the Afghan Embassy in Washington D.C.
Photo by Cpl. Reece Lodderion; archived on DVIDS.
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Op-Ed: Afghanistan is a Winnable War in Progress
November 15, 2011
First, the arbitrary content of news reports and commentaries only adds fuel to a political blame-game among the very key stakeholders, who must work together as partners to address Afghanistan’s multidimensional problems. For example, the frequent criticism of widespread corruption in the Afghan government is hardly helpful. It only pits the international community against the Afghan government, preventing both sides from finding a durable solution to the problem of corruption. Indeed, however, the problem of corruption must first be contextually defined or else it remains a buzzword, used and abused by anyone wanting to vent frustration and shift blame to the Afghan government.
On the Afghan side, corruption is a systemic problem of weak governance due to a lack of international investment in building the democratic institutions of “checks and balances” in the Afghan state. Without capacity and resources, Afghan state institutions cannot execute their constitutional responsibilities to provide people with such integrated services as security, rule of law, social protection, and a sustainable livelihood. Of course, a police officer and a judge, both of whom constitute the eyes and arms of any government respectively, would hardly be effective in their jobs, if they were not trained, equipped, and paid adequately. If this problem chronically persists, the incentive for most law enforcement officials to stay with the government, in an environment of pervasive insecurity and poverty, will become one of engaging in bribery to satisfy the basic survival needs of their families and their future.
On the international side, corruption means spending tens of billions of dollars to prop up parallel structures for unsustainable service delivery in Afghanistan. As the audit reports of the United States Congress and other oversight bodies of the donor community demonstrate, much of donor-related corruption involves the use of private contractors and multiple sub-contractors, each of which skims off between 20 to 80 percent of the donated funds to Afghanistan. The continued channeling of aid resources through such parallel structures as predatory contractors, NGOs that never go away, and a spoiled family of the United Nations agencies undermines the very Afghan state institutions, which must be built to restore statehood in Afghanistan. After all, the country has a resilient and enterprising nation, but is in dire need of a functioning state.
Second, the public in Afghanistan and the donor countries are easily misled, when all they read in the papers or watch on TV is a heavy dose of sensationally negative news about every aspect of international engagement in Afghanistan. Afghans are gradually led to believe in conspiracy theories, asking why the best armed and equipped forces of more than 40 countries have failed to defeat a weak insurgency without a national cause. By contrast, the taxpayers in donor countries may wonder where and how their tax monies have been spent, if the life of an ordinary Afghan has not changed much, ten years after the fall of the Taliban. And they can hardly accept the tragedy of losing their sons and daughters in a far-flung nation, if they are not shown the inextricable link between their own homeland security and stability in Afghanistan.
Third, indeed, it is the Taliban and their supporters in the region that stand to gain from a continued miscommunication of facts and mismanagement of expectations in Afghanistan. And in the uncontrollable battle of perceptions, the Afghan people and their international supporters stand to lose, even though the big war of ideas for restoring peace, liberty and pluralism in Afghanistan is clearly theirs to win.
However, it is not too late for the media to change course and move in the right direction to call spade a spade in Afghanistan. Adhering to the principles of good journalism, the news reports out of Afghanistan must always reflect two indisputable facts.
First, Afghanistan is very much a work in progress. Much progress has been made over the past ten years, but far more work remains to be done to consolidate and deepen the institutions of democratic governance in Afghanistan. Corruption — like elsewhere, including in the developed world — will not disappear in the country. But the problem will incrementally diminish, as Afghanistan develops holistically, indeed, by going through the same different stages of development, which developed and developing countries have over the course of several decades, if not centuries. Once the status of Afghanistan as a work in progress is accepted, genuine efforts must be made to learn from the mistakes of the past 10 years to “do no harm” by enabling Afghanistan to grow a productive economy. And when this process slowly takes off, the resilience and enterprising genius of the Afghan people will help deliver their country from its past miseries, wrought by bad neighbors and the Cold War politics.
Second, parallel to the acceptance of the above fact, the external problem of insecurity in the form of a weak but destructive insurgency in Afghanistan must be forcefully acknowledged, because an unstable Afghanistan can destabilize the region and threaten international security. Key actors in the international system, led by the United States, must pursue a collective long-term policy of helping Pakistan end institutional support for extremism and terrorism in the region. When this genuinely happens, Afghanistan will automatically be secure and soon on its way towards full integration with the rest of the democratic and free world.
M. Ashraf Haidari is the Deputy Assistant National Security Advisor of Afghanistan, who formerly served as the Chargé d’Affaires and Political Counselor of the Afghan Embassy in Washington D.C.
Photo by Cpl. Reece Lodderion; archived on DVIDS.
