42% of the Afghan Parliment is Illiterate

August 4th, 2009

Kabul, Afghanistan

Today we dodged eleven in-coming Taliban missiles. Nine of them were directed toward the airport. One was at the U.S. Embassy and one went right over our compound and smashed into the building across the street. I cannot even think about this - so I'm re-directing my thoughts toward the big development picture.

The Afghanistan governing operations budget relies on over 75% of it's resources from international donors. The World Bank, The EC and USAID are the biggest funders. But there are over 34 separate countries offering money as well. This means the Afghans don't really own their own government. It belongs to an international community of donors. But the Afghans are all uber-trained and trying to run their own country. Even today, they cannot fight the Taliban themselves. The International Special Forces are in charge.

As the United States uses Afghanistan for it's political football the Afghans suffer. For example, USAID poured almost $1 Billion Dollars into a massive rule of law project. This project balanced tribal/informal with formal, centralized justice systems. USAID built courtrooms, courthouses and provided massive technical assistance in legal systems. But now Holbrook wants to re-direct all US funding to the Eastern & Western conflict areas and to focus on strengthening tribal justice systems. Ambassador Eikenberry wants to focus our efforts only on a formal system. So the entire project has shut down. No court system is in place now. You don't need much of an imagination to think about the consequences ... particularly right now with vicious warlords and Taliban fighters shooting in the streets.

But the US is actually the most organized and strategic partner for Afghanistan. The French have a wheat seed give-away program. They offer French wheat seeds all over the world. So while the U.S. is working on a complex alternative crop program to find ways of offering an alternative to Poppy production, the French are dumping wheat seeds all over Afghanistan. This French wheat has sterilized the indigenous Afghan wheat and other crops such as saffron crocus. So we are working at cross-purposes. But try telling that to the French. The British government is funding technical assistance to the Ministry of Finance. They are working very hard to provide assistance to the Afghans in managing the donor funds and generating return-to project funds. Then there is the World Bank. Don't get me started here. The World Bank strategy is to offer loans to governments. Big loans. These loans go directly to the government. We hope. Most of the time they pay for Land Rovers and houses for corrupt government officials. But try telling that to The World Bank. They become very strident and arrogant about what they refer to as a 'humane' way to create SWaP (A System Wide Approach for donor funding). Their incredibly high priced consultants fly into countires (first class of course) ... and stay for about a day ... long enough to swan around the people they've just given money to and to show how cool they are ... and then the fly back to Washington D.C. - by way of Geneva or Prague or some place where they can give a big speech about development in Afghanistan.

To top it all off, 42% of the Afghan Parliment is illiterate. While this International Theater of the Absurd is swishing around Kabul, the poor Afghans have to deal with basic issues like knowing how to read. As ironies abound, the young generation of twenty something Afghans have surfaced and are running the country. They are the translators, the writers, the teachers, the assistants and the diplomats, the journalists, the economists and ... they should run the country.