Afghan development dilemma

If you walk round the back of the British military base at Chah-e-Anjir, in central Helmand, you find yourself in a graveyard of rusting tractors, diggers, Oldsmobiles and generators. These are the remains of the Helmand River Valley Project, an attempt to bring development to southern Afghanistan, which cost the US government $100m USD in the 1950s.

Over the next few years, Britain and the US are going to spend a further $500 USD in a new attempt to develop Helmand, even as British soldiers and US marines fight the Taliban in the same territory.

“We’re trying to achieve military objectives in the same time frame as getting the government to deliver basic services,” explained Arthur Snell, a senior offical in Britain’s Provincial Reconstruction Team, based in Lashkar Gah. “We’re winning hearts and minds for the government not for the international forces.”

The idea is that once the Taliban has been driven from the population centres, the local population will be won over by government-provided services such as healthcare and education which the Taliban either failed to maintain or destroyed.

Last week, I sat in on the regular Thursday meeting of the Nad-e-Ali District Administrative Assembly, chaired by the rotund and cheerful district governor, Habibullah Khan. He has endeared himself to British officials by energetically promoting development projects, and tirelessly holding “shuras”, public meetings, to persuade the people that the government, not the Taliban, offers the best future.

The line ministries now all have local representatives, and the education officer – appropriately bespectacled and earnest – was presenting his first annual plan.

Then there was a meeting of the district community council – 45 turbanned men, recently elected (the one who’s been imprisoned for drug smuggling was excused). No women, but that would probably be too much to hope for in this, the most conservative part of Afghanistan. As I watched the meeting unfold, I realised that the British are creating a bureaucracy in Helmand, just as they did in India and Africa in colonial times.

They’re right, of course, that there’s no point in administering everything themselves, because that’s not sustainable, but channelling their money through the central government is proving tricky.

This year’s funding for projects in Nad-e-Ali was delivered to the Ministry of Finance in Kabul back in March. It should haved reached the line ministries by July, then the provincial government and finally the district. But as yet it hasn’t arrived, so Governor Habibullah’s team are understandably frustrated.

For the moment, everyone is saying the delay is caused by the system being slow, but the spectre of corruption looms large.

“The government is not rotten here in Helmand, but the lack of credibility in central government is a problem,” said Snell.

And if the money doesn’t arrive, or is dispersed slowly and inefficiently, the district development plans will be delayed and the people won’t regain faith in government.

That’s assuming they do want development projects in the first place.

“Their priorities are worlds apart from what ours might be,” said Warrant Officer Gareth Davies as he showed me the decrepit old pharmacy in Chah-e-Anjir and the sparkling new one, funded by the British.

“Medical facilities appear relatively low on their priority list,” he said. “Every time we ask them, things like security are high up the list, and anything to do with religion – for example, regenerating mosques – is where their priority is going to be.”

Recent research suggests that the problem may be even more fundamental.

“The major factors perceived to be fueling insecurity have little to do with a lack of social services or infrastructure,” writes Andrew Wilder of Tufts University, who has been carrying out interviews in Helmand. “Instead, one of the main reasons given by the Afghans we interviewed for the growing insurgency was their corrupt and unjust government.”

That’s the conundrum. The British are right that sustainable development can only be achieved by the government. But if the government is the root of the problem, the strategy is fatally flawed.