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pledges have gone. They criticize the internationals for "filling the
bellies" of the privileged elites, including the Karzai regime.
"International recovery has become one big pretend game," said Aga
Khan Foundation architect, Jolyon Leslie, who has been working here
for 20 years. Mohammed Eshaq, a former Northern Alliance information director now managing an IT company in Kabul, agrees. "Many outsiders are simply ticking off the boxes for the sake of appearance. It doesn't matter what works or not," he said.
Since the intervention in October, 2001, western donors have largely
failed to heed recommendations for carefully implemented recovery
initiatives, notably in rural areas where nearly 80 percent of the
population lives. They also ignored warnings not to throw money at
Kabul, turning it into another Dubai that ensures the comfort of the
international community, but offers little to the rest of the country.
Aid workers argue that the Taliban and other insurgents, whose support is spreading within the aid agencies and government ministries, need to be involved. They point out that working in communities with known rebel elements has not prevented them from promoting girl's education or agricultural initiatives for women.
Direct engagement with local populations is precisely what the most
experienced NGOs have been doing for years. "Working in the villages
takes longer and is far more difficult than Kabul, but it's the only
way to make changes. It's also one's best security," said coordinator
Pascal Arthaud of Madera, a French agricultural NGO.
Eight years on, there needs to be far more informed new thinking about what to do about Afghanistan based on on-the-ground realities. The current message is that overcoming the insurgency by military-dominated means has become far more important than rebuilding the country. Yet nothing has ever been achieved in Afghanistan by force. NATO's proposed new initiatives are too late. The hatred for the occupiers already exists.
Many Afghans, including senior government officials, simply have no confidence in the staying power of the international community. For recovery to succeed, the West needs to make its longterm commitment clear and unequivocal. Equally crucial, it needs to re-establish contact with ordinary Afghans, particularly those who consider the insurgents the better option.
(Edward Girardet is a American writer, journalist and former foreign
correspondent for The Christian Science Monitor, The NewsHour and
other media who has been covering Afghanistan for 30 years. Author of Afghanistan:The Soviet War (St Martins Press, 1985) and The Essential Field Guide to Afghanistan (Crosslines, 2006), he recently returned on a grant from the San Francisco-based Center for Investigative Reporting to complete research for another book on Afghanistan).
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