Since 2002 I have been engaged in Afghanistan for a total of three and a half years. This engagement has included periods working at a field level with an INGO interacting with villagers and local government officials implementing anti-opium programs through to managing national signature projects while serving as Senior Ministerial Advisor with the UN. My most recent engagement was completed last September managing the technical and contractual aspects of the USA government counter-insurgency program in sixteen provinces along the Pakistan border region.
Over this period of time, I believe I have come to understand what is working in Afghanistan and what isn’t and why that is the case. I am unapologetically cynical of what success we have achieved so far, an argument that is well supported by the limited change we have effected in social, economic and political indicators over this eight year period. In the time I have served in Afghanistan I have sought to understand the motivation of communities and the behavior and conditions that leads to conflict.
Traditionally we tend to measure the success of many of the internationally funded programs based on the deliverables; how many kilometres of road we construct; how many blankets we deliver or tons of food aid we provide; how many short term jobs we create. We largely do not measure the short term or long term impact of these interventions; neither specifically nor generally and often do not take significant account of “lessons learned” in developing new strategies. If we were to consider what has been the defining impact of many projects concluded over the past eight years we would find many are left wanting in the process of restoring meaningful social, economic and political structures within the country. We report successes and tend to ignore failures.
