Progress?

Today marks the 7-day countdown until I leave Kabul and return to the developed world. First, Dubai for 24 hours, then to Paris for 4 days, then finally back to SF on Super Bowl Sunday.

I had an interesting discussion with an Indian woman at the hotel this morning over breakfast. She has been working here in Kabul for over 1.5 years (and has lived at the hotel the entire time. She’s great. She definitely throws her weight around the hotel and gets perks like extra heaters for her room, specially made eggs, warm milk, etc.) I learned that she has been working on various urban development projects for over 20 years in various under-developed countries including Tanzania and the Balkans. She said the model for development is virtually the same everywhere, which makes complete sense to me. All the money comes from big money organizations like United States Agency for International Development (USAID), The World Bank, the United Nations, UK Department for International Development (DFID), and the Asian Development Bank. With these funds, they support development projects (economic development, governance, civil society, law reform, education, health, you name it) that implement approaches that fit into a familiar model. This model is traditionally developed in the ivory tower of Western universities and rarely do projects stray from this style. Whether this approach is the most effective continues to be debated. Afghanistan could potentially be one of the arguments for seeking alternative development angles.

This woman told me that one of the biggest factors impeding the progress of development here is the distrust of Western experts guiding the development projects. The locals would rather work with development experts from Asia rather than the West. Stepping back and thinking about this logically, it makes sense. Contributions from the west in the past have mostly been violent and aggressive. Distrust and skepticism over this history has prevented many of the projects from expanding. Whereas in places like the Balkans, an eagerness to develop and partner with the European Union has made them welcome Westerners (Western Europeans, that is) to help them in this process.

Another huge impediment to Afghan development is the lack of education of its population. Again, since the Russian invasions and subsequent regimes, education was disrupted virtually for the past 25 years. While many civil society organizations have standardized processes that they intend to incorporate to build Afghanistan’s infrastructure, the lack of adequate knowledge and skills by local Afghans have delayed much of its progress. For this reason, impact has been minimal. I also learned that substantive results likely will not be able to be measured until 10 to 20 years down the road.

Additionally, many of the appointed directors of various ministries and the central government institutions are actually Afghan-Americans or Afghans educated in the West. I found out that many of these appointees are younger than 35 and have not necessarily lived in Afghanistan their whole lives. A question persists whether these individuals will stay on or return to their foreign homes after their terms are complete furthering complicating the legacy that these projects are having.

Its really such an exciting time to be here to see a country at this point in its development. The question remains whether the billions of dollars in foreign aid being invested here will provide a stronger Afghanistan or have no effect at all. The consensus here is that it is still unknown.