Steve Hutcheson

I have spent 3 and half years in Afghanistan since 2002 and have been the program manager in charge of about 200 million in various infrastructure projects, the last year with the Counter Insurgency program. It is all largely a waste. We are not bringing about peace, we are not changing anything. Why build a road to market if there is no market? Why give Afghan government workers computers when they cannot write and do not even have a manual system functioning first?

I think of America as a country developing on the basis of small government, small welfare and high on entrepreneurship. In Afghanistan we have introduced aid on a system that is focused on big government, big welfare, no entrepreneurship and all managed by public servants.

If they were to measure the impact of a project they funded three years ago, there would be nothing to comment on. We are doing work now that was being done six years ago, we are simply providing maintenance, not development.

It is extremely frustrating that those making the decisions on how funds are dispersed do so on a whim that they bring from the west, without understanding the people or the internal systems of the people of Afghanistan and all with a new way of doing things that they think will work knowing none of the above.

There are currently two groups of criminals in Afghanistan, one being the insurgents, the other being in government. We provide support to one side of what is a essentially a turf war between the two.

My guess is that ultimately, the west will stop giving aid and it will revert to the civil war with the Talibs driving the criminals out as they did in 1996 at which point the government will fold as it did then.

I wish that were not the case. Where we have failed is that we have not changed anything. We have not created sustainable industry but sought to enhance the existing economic structure of subsistence farming. There is no industry other than what is required to service the international assistance and budget. Take that away and you will be left with a big zero in economic activity.

Let me see if I have this straight. Masood Qaim who recently wrote in the Guardian (I’ve Changed my Mind about the West published 30 Dec 2009) about the failure of the west to take its reconstruction activities in Afghanistan seriously, who grew up the son of a General with power, position and was part of the privileged elite in socialist Afghanistan, losing it all on departure of the Russians. He is unhappy and grumbles that the Americans or the west have not reinstated his life to that which it once was and have not bought back the development in a manner that would suit him.  As a journalist Masood and judging from his complaint, sees himself as part of the intellectual mass of Afghanistan that believes and challenges the west should be doing more to reinstate his county to its former self.

Frankly, Masood represents about one percent of Afghanistan as it stands. Afghans voted and it was Karzai whom for better or worse the apparent majority Afghans felt represents their plight best of all.  

There are substantial issues for Afghanistan to face up to, least of all the rampant corruption amongst the government, the abuse of power by the warlords and the ongoing philosophical battle that represents the fundamental policy of the Taliban versus the liberation espoused by a more humane western sense of human rights. Biting the hands that primarily feeds them is the last thing Afghans need to be doing if they are to move anywhere in the direction of change and development.

In a Facebook thread on this article posted by Nushin Arbabzadah, another Guradian journalist, I have challenge Masood to address the question of how change would come about to Afghanistan if the west was to abruptly withhold all aid and intervention in the processes that are taking place. How will Afghans solve some if not all of the seemingly intractable problems his country faces?

In another more inspiring article that I have read lately drawn by Nicholas D Kristof in the New York Times (His Gift Changes Lives published New York Times 16^th December 2009) Kristof writes about a Sudanese youth, Valentino Deng who at first escaped the rigors of the war in Sudan but on eventually achieving some sense of stability and security in the US, has returned to his country work on the development process himself, building a school where countless NGOs have failed. He is not carping about how that the west is not doing enough, he has moved on and is doing it himself, he sees himself as the lucky one and that it is up to him to actually bring about the change needed to his country.    

Masood, and he is not alone in this, need to take control of their own set of circumstances. If it cannot be achieved at the ballot box then it needs to be done irrespective of the government and the corruption that exists in the world as they know it. It is after all, only what he is presently expecting the west to do for him.  

I take umbrage at his dismissal of the work of foreign NGO’s where he labels them as the greatest source of corruption in Afghanistan. Far be it from me to defend the actions of all of them, I often disagree with the methods and programs they become engaged in, however having worked there and experienced firsthand where the problems lie, it is not the internationals per se, it is more often in the local staff who find an avenue to corrupt the processes, who take backhanders from contractors, who manipulate the flow of funds an any number of other ways of stripping the funds out of NGO programs. For the most part as a program manager, I saw my role and that of other international functionaries in part was to introduce systems and processes that perhaps would not eliminate the corruption but would at least bring it into a respectable level of say eighty percent delivered. Where international inexperience on the part of the program manager was evident is where the most rorting of the aid funding existed. Many believed much like Masood seems to believe that Afghans would not be the major protagonists in this failure to see full delivery of program funding to bring about major impact by its delivery. It is not an intentional process but one brought about by default and consequence of young idealists taking a lead in many programs.

There is a problem with much aid funding that is for sure. Programs are introduced that have no commercial basis, they are feel good projects that do little to alter the economic plight that is at the root of the complaint Masood has.  We build schools in remote locations and then cannot get any qualified teachers to attend them because of security or remoteness or simply a lack of teachers. More than three hundred schools in the eastern provinces are vacant because of this. We build and equip clinics when there is no qualified staff to man them for the same reasons.  We build roads to market and then do nothing about ensuring that there is in fact a market at the end of it. We do nothing to ensure that the 70% of rural poor who are landless have an opportunity to have greater aspiration than to simply be an itinerant farm laborer or part time Taliban as an alternative. We look at our individual programs as self important and fail to register them holistically with the overall development process needed for the county.

Simply put, Masood is wrong in his assessment. He would do well to take a leaf out of Valentino Deng’s book and consider his good fortune to be one of the lucky ones and take action to make the changes he wants for Afghanistan himself.

Capitalism as we know it is perhaps at a crossroad. It may have reached a position in the way we live our lives that only social disorder will resolve some of the difficulties we are now facing unless new options are created to alter the way our communities co-exist. Presently hundreds of millions of people around the world have been affected by the fallout of the financial collapse that has occurred over the past year. Millions upon millions are presently unemployed; countless millions of others have lost their homes and lifestyles and again hundreds of millions if not billions have suffered financial loss through the collapse of investments.

Part of the problem is the development of unfettered capitalism, the belief that the acquisition of more and more wealth is immutable and inscribed in stone. Thirty to forty years ago the salary difference between the lowest and highest in any organization may have been in the order of three to four times. Now differences in compensation in the hundreds of times are not unusual. It raises the question of how much additional contribution the highest paid is making to the overall success of the operation.

I was once complimented in that as the former manager of a program in Afghanistan and after considerable absence I gave credit and greeted as a friend a humble man whose single role was to open and close the gate as we entered the compound. As I explained to my engineer, I saw that the gatekeeper’s role was as important to the overall operation as anyone. If he was not vigilant in his task to secure the compound as he did, we were all at risk and in that respect he was critical to the safe operation of us all. The same can be said in any organization today.

People and governments however in another respect are intrinsically generous.  For the past decade I have had the good fortune to have been engaged in dispensing some of the universal largess in some of the world’s more difficult crisis zones, Kosovo, Afghanistan, Aceh and to a lesser extent Thailand and now Malaysia. People with the most have been the most generous. Bill Gates has contributed billions in the fight against malaria; countless trusts have been established by philanthropists worldwide to engage in social restoration, building schools and clinics or simply provide financial aid and hundreds of millions of people have contributed to millions of charities and social programs worldwide. From my own small involvement I have been given the managerial task to dispense more than two hundred million dollars over the period I have been working in these operations.

 But in all the time I have been involved in this line of work I have questioned the overall impact that all this generosity has made in solving the problems of half of the world’s population. If we provide aid today, we often need to provide more aid tomorrow. I liken it to placing a dollar in the cup of a beggar. We don’t solve his problem since he will most likely be there again tomorrow. We take on a role of Benefactor and Beneficiary where one party is always kept at a disadvantage and is unlikely to become our equal.

Since 2002 more than thirty billion dollars has been provided in direct aid to Afghanistan yet they still have the worst social indicators across all measures of all the countries in the world. The aid program has not been successful. We have however perpetuated the roles of benefactor and beneficiary without developing any sort of successful partnership between the two parties.

I firmly believe it is now time to address this particular issue directly. If I give you something, I want you to something in return to develop the partnership. I was heartened to see an article recently about an admirable young Sudanese man, Valentino Deng who has been moderately successful in the US and is now actively working towards building schools in his own country. He view is that “he is the lucky one so it is incumbent upon him to help his people solve some of their problems.”

In some ways, (I am an engineer so am taking an engineering approach to developing a solution) I believe that for the most part, people are prepared to work. Over the years I have employed more than 60,000 people on cash for work programs and I know and they know that the money we would hand out each week was theirs, they had earned it. But the question that always niggled me was the lack of sustainability these programs had. We would employ a thousand people for three months to construct a road to market for some isolated community. At the end of the project however, there was no continuing work for the thousand engaged in the process.     

Presently UNESCO has listed part of Penang to be a cultural and social World Heritage site. That in itself has created something of a commercial flurry in the development of the region however the most likely scenario is that it will become a gentrified enclave, eliminating in its progress the lifestyle and social framework of those that presently live within its boundaries.

The solution as I see it is to put the property development aspect required for Penang to work in conjunction with the social development work that is necessary to retain the social and cultural structures as they are. Through this there is also an opportunity to modify our approach to dealing with the social issues of the disadvantaged such that we arrive at sustainable outcomes and that problems are not simply solved only for as long as the aid continues, we enable the poor and disadvantaged to reach a position where they no longer require aid. That then brings into account a new means of addressing social philanthropy, philanthropy that enables the poor to have sustainable incomes and permanent jobs where they are in partnership with those that provide them the means to achieve that status, the benefactor and the beneficiary are as equals.

To do this requires the philanthropist to become not simple the benefactor giving alms to a beneficiary but working as the financier providing soft loans that need to be repaid and as that is returned providing further soft loans to start more projects and so on and so on all the while retaining a direct connection and equity with the process.  It is not simple one gives and the other takes, they both have a common objective and outcome in mind. Perhaps that is a solution to address the existing faults of capitalism. It is one that I am certainly working on.

There is considerable angst amongst international circles regarding the corruption of the recent Presidential elections and the lack of capacity that is available within the Afghan government.  But what is it that they are wanting?

Presumably they want to see good government however what they have is an administration that is wracked with corruption, staffed by untried criminals, lacking all manner of administrative capacity and a litany of other failings. It simply begs the question as to what is it that they are suppose to provide in the big equation that is Afghanistan?

From the perspective of the average Afghan, their lives would in many cases be better off simply by eliminating all local government intervention. Governance as it exists is a matter of favors and rampant nepotism all managed by incompetent and corrupt officials. It is of parties playing off other parties, be they of a different tribe, ethnic group or gender. 

There function is marred by an unrealistic desire. A desire to emulate good government such as it might exist in pristine environments of the west. That is not going to happen. Much of the present intervention is to provide these agencies with new tools, new infrastructure and new skills without addressing what purpose they serve in the long run. It provides computers to people in government who for the most part cannot read, have no electricity to drive the processors and comes before the ability to affect an administrative system that cannot even operate on a manual system since almost none exists. If seventy percent of the public servants in Afghanistan were dismissed, there would be almost no affect on the functioning or well being of the Afghan community.

Government is necessary but it has to arrive from a position of demand. Afghanistan as it is possible has the most laborious bureaucracy in the world. The administrative process is rife with incompetence and payoffs. It is simple not needed. It is proposing to address the problems of a fully functioning economy and social system when there is no economy and the social systems is more in tune with the local mosque than it is with the warlords.

The US and the west would do better to reconsider what it is they are proposing to build in Afghanistan.

Afghanistan is not going to advance simply because it has good government. It is going to advance if it has an economic activity that provides every one with a basic income and life support. Everything else will be or at least should be a flow down process from that. Inventing laws or holding up activity until the laws are drafted is the thinking that Lewis Carrol may have been considering when he drafted Alice. Allowing local officials unfettered power to dictate terms and conditions of projects has been the greatest stumbling block in developing a working economy and social reform.  

Afghanistan has traditionally had a socialist styled administrative system with hundreds of inefficient public departments, utilities and state owned enterprises controlling major sectors of the economy. The public service is increasingly large and cumbersome with multiple layers of bureaucracy at a national, provincial, district and village level, each sucking relentlessly on the public teat. So far through Afghan history, it has failed to function realistically. The international assistance program however continues to build on that failed model. Coincidentally, this flies in the face of a demand by the main providers and backers, the US where its domestic population is demanding smaller government and smaller government regulation enabling the market to sort out its own problems as part of whatever is perceived to be enshrined in its two hundred year old constitution.  

Where the west can assist Afghanistan is not in continuing to protect its failed government. It has an obligation at this stage to build a credible economy allowing market forces to regulate unfair practices as they evolve and not spend billions on creating a corrupt preventative environment before they even start. Hundreds of industries have stagnated waiting for the legislation to be introduced that in part will provide the legislators with unfettered access to the benefits that might flow out of them.

Afghanistan needs what might be termed “social venture capital”, funds and technology backed up with technical support to get the population and the economy moving forward and not simply allowing the unrepresentative government to control and restrict that process as it does. 

I am engaged in a discussion on  whether aid agencies should be regulated. I am not necessarily in favor since I don’t really see that as the problem. This is in part what I have added to the discussion. What is more at stake is the way we do business.

Takes building schools for instance. We do a lot. I must have built 30 schools in the ten years I have been working in this business but I have to say, I am happy enough if I see a group of kids sitting under a tree and the teacher has a simple blackboard propped against it. It was good enough for Socrates. Schools are not just buildings, it is about what the kids are learning. Looking back at a situation I was faced with in Jalalabad in 2002. We wanted to build schools and clinics. The difficulty was for both there was a problem with staffing with health professionals or qualified teachers in some of these remote locations. The teachers and the nurses need to be trained before we start worrying about constructing the buildings.

That brings me to probably the most serious constraints we have in the aid industry. One of the things see all the time however is this fear of profit, particularly by the NGOs but also by the UN and for the most part the donors. I was in Aceh just after the tsunami and I along with several INGOs were in a meeting about the need for ice factories. Since they started making ice, it had been in the hands of private enterprise however no one wanted to fund the owner and figured that a cooperative would have been a better idea. I am sure that in a truly socialist environment it might have but this was not a socialist environment. What was necessary was that the owner needed funding to get his business back on track as much as they needed new schools. Without ice, the fishermen could not preserve their catch so the whole community was suffering because of this issue of support to an individual making a profit.

I come from Australia. The whole economy is profit-centric yet in crisis locations people argue for socialism and the development of a welfare economy.

USAID are the funniest in this regard. America has been built on small government, small welfare and the advancement of big thinking entrepreneurs however where ever they apply funds, Afghanistan for instance, it is big government, big welfare and prohibition of profit, all managed by government workers.

Rearrange that thinking and then we might start to get somewhere in solving poverty instead of simply supporting it while we hold their hands.

So do we need to regulate. I don’t think so. If the donors who are the providers of the funds are to change their thinking and recognise that supplying a country with donation wheat is not as good idea as getting a regional marketing organisation functioning then we might see progress. Too often we look at the small picture instead of the big picture and the small picture is certainly not working.

If you read the “about me” on this blog you will see that between 2003 and 2005 I spent two and half years in Afghanistan working on large job creation programs with the UNDP. These were aimed at employed large numbers of local workers at rebuilding public infrastructure such as roads, schools, clinics and irrigations systems particularly in the rural areas of Jalalabad and Kandahar while aiming to find alternatives to the cultivation and production of opium. In the early days I was with Relief International managing their “Creating and Restoring Alternative Livelihood’s Sources” (CRAWLS) program that was funded by USAid and that flowed over to my engagement with UNDP. It was one of those vexing problems that the wages we paid to build these roads, schools and irrigation systems although common for the region were less than the poppy farmers paid to the labourers causing our programs to suffer during the planting and harvesting periods.

Afghanistan as you may appreciate has some 80% of the population working in agrarian based industries where correspondingly free water is one of their major deficiencies, a cause towards which we were often engaged to overcome the seasonal irregularities building or restoring irrigation systems and wells.

To that end, working with my partner Akiyo, we are now looking at a small investigative project that involves utilizing the worst of one situation in Malaysia in solving the worst of another in Afghanistan and hopefully arrive at a genuinely positive outcome.

We are soon moving from Thailand and Malaysia and in doing so we looked at what we could usefully do there. One of the things we came upon was the millions of tonnes of waste materials resulting from palm oil production and that prompted me to consider how they may be used beneficially in resource poor Afghanistan.

My niece first put me to the idea of using a compost in plant propagation and initially I was thinking along these lines and will come back to that as we get more established. What we are looking at initially is to investigate the use of the fibrous material waste material as mulch/weed mats around certain crops, in particular cotton or various vine crops and other arboriculture projects that have a high demand for moisture retention. The idea of a mulch mat around the plants slows down the process of evaporation that 40 degree heat will induce giving the plant a greater chance to survive.

One outcome of poor water supply we found in Afghanistan was that the farmers were prone to plant opium and hashish in lieu as they were more drought tolerant than normal crops.

Successful trials of the material have apparently been conducted in similar climatic conditions in Australia and we want to establish similar trials in Afghanistan. What we are initially pursuing is to:

• produce a mat material that meets with the agricultural demands in Afghanistan.
• design a suitable configuration that can be easily shipped and distributed
• field test in comparative plots the effectiveness of using a mulch/weed mat during the formative growing periods.

In that respect we are seeking to link up with interested parties who may have the programs, resources and the capacity to support the design process and research in Malaysia and to then conduct the field trials in Afghanistan.

If you would like to assist our quest please contact me. We are currently in the process of setting up a legal entity in Malaysia that will enable us solicit funding specifically for this purpose.

Water is going to be one of the world’s major problems of the future. Doing something now will soften the damage it causes.

In all aspects of life, various segments of our communities have a common perception of their function and purpose. The military is regarded for what it is, a battalion of soldiers whose primary purpose is war, the idea that they might change that perception is difficult conceptually and ideologically and one that I believe is flawed. I have often wondered at the logicality of the “hearts and minds” efforts of military contingents in some of the places I have been engaged such as Kosovo, Afghanistan and Aceh. It is not just simple a matter of their extensive capability to do the work but the perception as to how they are primarily considered in a country where in the past, they may have crashed though doors, pulled down walls, taken captives and even wounded or killed people from the same neighbourhood where they are now installing a well or building a school or clinic. In the any event however, should the security declines they can easily revert to that more aggressive mode, the benevolent bully in the development cycle.

In most peaceful communities of the west, the military may be called out in moments of catastrophe and rightly so. They have the large machines, they have the manpower, the have the organisational structure and they have the logistics to support an immediate response however in terms of nation building they pose a political conundrum that is largely unnecessary and fraught with danger of abuse, abuse from both sides of the crisis. They do so at a cost that is both economically and politically prohibitive.

Where I saw the largest military response to a crisis other than from a military position was in Aceh immediately following the tsunami. Air, sea and ground forces from a dozen countries had descended into the province to provide assistance that raised an immediate dilemma for the national government. The Australian army for instance bought in a large medical and engineering capacity and did an admirable job that made me proud to be associated with them yet the preceding conflict in Timor also bought in a political opposition from the national army who had in a de-facto manner, forcefully opposed them at the time of that incident.

Although there was ample capacity and a willingness, there was a sense of animosity and restriction on movement that severely curtailed what they could and couldn’t do. More “friendly” armies but perhaps less capable units however were given greater freedom of movement, particularly with their air wings that worked tirelessly distributing aid along the coastline where access other than by sea had been completely cut off.

The US sent in a naval medical ship however it arrived some weeks after the majority of tsunami trauma cases had been dealt with by what was an absolute excess of private doctors and medical teams on the ground. Unfortunately it was relegated to dealing with a few special domestic and road casualties cases that normally go with any large city. Being obliged to locate in international waters it also entailed a ground-air-sea mission to treat even a simple appendectomy that may well have been undertaken in the hospital proper yet the large expended funds required to get them there dictated that they be “seen” to be contributing to the population at home.

In Kosovo there was a different agenda and political perspective of the military forces there yet all the time they were still regarded as that, a military force and not one assigned a nation building function. Under this circumstance however it was also largely unnecessary as the province had a surfeit of humanitarian and UN agencies dealing with almost every issue that the population could require and to engage the military in the planning and execution of programs was largely vacant other than in the application of cases that required a more difficult logistics. For a while I was based in a large village quite devastated and where a number of aid agencies had commenced reconstruction programs. The military capacity of the UAE contingent based in the town undertook a similar if not smaller rebuilding program however it applied itself to the most difficult mountain terrain where its numerous rough terrain vehicles and air support had the capacity to deliver the much needed reconstruction materials that otherwise may never have arrived.

Afghanistan was where I saw a transition from the exercise of dominant military capacity to one that was now interested in the hearts and mind campaign of the population, one that also posed an immediate conflict that even today the military and the involved governments are not facing up to while attempting to justify their intervention.

Like in Aceh, the military of the US and NATO is seen as the opposition to those that waged battle against them, in this case it was the Taliban. There is no excuse for the Taliban however the notion of nation building has since been integrated into the fight against them, a sort of play off to win tacit support from the population at large. The population however care naught for either side. They are more intent on resuming their lives after twenty-five years of war, to re-establish farming incomes or find a job in the ever declining economic travails that now beset the country as indeed it is affecting rest of the world, to resume a normal life.

The presence of the military and association with their programs however exposes the local people to the inherent danger of being charged with consorting with the enemy when these friendly armies finally depart, a real and ever present danger and one that on a daily basis is being waged by the Taliban to win back, or at least negate the support that all the good work invokes.

In this case, although the armies on one hand are building good will, on the other they are still applying themselves as an aggressor when the need arises and that is predominantly how the population continue to see them, no matter how much good they can achieve.

Being an aid worker for some years I have since learned that the psychological games that are played on a needy population can backfire and impede development rather than enhance it. Just handing out largess is not the answer if the population have no ownership of the projects or the resultant benefit. Too often a beneficiary or a village will wait until the free service comes along before they find the need to go and create the benefit them self. Too often they want to be paid for their labour that is ultimately for their benefit, it becomes a case of “greed comes before need”. It is this that has become a common issue in the distribution of aid and one that the military unknowingly serves to foster without taking account of the overall development issues at stake.

Often too, the military in its quest to improve its own public perception though aid development, do so outside the purview of those who have an ultimate responsibility, the government, as was often the case in Afghanistan. The final argument being however was that so much was needed that what ever they do will be well received. I would argue that more could be achieved in the application of these resources towards large projects that went outside the smaller hearts and minds exercise but came with wider benefit and of greater national importance, the creation of water storage damns, flood mitigation, the reconstruction of major access roads and the like. Instead the armies are delivering wells and playing with the children in the villages, creating a positive spin to account for their reason to be there.

In Afghanistan, the action of the army or at least those in the position to decide on initiating the hearts and minds campaigns must however take some of the responsibility for the decline in the overall security situation that now exists throughout the country. I was in Kandahar in January 2003 at the time the Taliban killed the first of the civilian casualties. It occurred because in their eyes, he represented the opposing military forces disregarding the fact that he worked for the Red Cross and was delivering water to poor villagers. This was before the US and NATO had taken to deliver these aid programs in the void created when the aid agencies retired to allow the war to conclude. At that time the US was seen as an aggressor, it still it. Its troops postured in that aggressive manner, unfriendly to the local population, disrespectful to local custom, intent solely on doing their job of routing out the enemy, of locating the Mullahs and finding al Qa-ida in a never clear landscape where anyone may have been and most likely was one or at least sympathetic.

The military have a role to play however once that is achieved they need to retire, if not to their base, then out of the country if that is appropriate. Countries prosper under the stewardship of self-determination with appropriate guidance, not a duplication of the existing government services as in some way the foreign militaries are now supposing to do. In Afghanistan and indeed Iraq, the military intervention has seen an escalation of insecurity partly in its quest to win public support and partly in its inability to solve the problems of containment of the enemy.

Communities exist around war. Afghanistan has existed around war for thirty years, Iraq has existed around war for ten years, what is not being addressed satisfactorily is the promotion of these communities to assist themselves achieve peace as opposed to forcing it upon them through constant military intervention.

The role of the military is many fold, it has a significant part to play in many aspects of life, it has no need to display its feminine side, it is desirable in the purpose of ensuing peace exists, in the removal of despotic regimes and powerful invaders, in providing is logistical might in times of critical need, however what it is not is a nation builder, it is not equipped physically or perceptively to play that role or the role of aid worker or to replicate the role of government, no matter how onerous that job might be to those that fulfill those tasks.

This article was the winner of an Essay competition conducted by the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting in March 2007 

I can remember as a child having a vision about America that made me envious in a strange sort of way coming from a rural Australian background. It was a John Wayne, Doris Day image about all that was right with the world, the good guys always won and the bad guys were consigned to Boot Hill or prison. As I have grown older, I often wondered what has happened to me, and the world for that matter to change that image as much as it has been.

America no longer holds any appeal what so ever, in fact it is the opposite as I have come to peal away the outer Tinsel Town layer image and have been able to see what lies beneath it, the heart of those people to whom I once felt such fascination. The world we live in has contracted. Air travel, the internet and instantaneous news broadcasts have bought it so much closer. It is no longer the visual broadcast that would precede the movies on a Saturday night, now I can see riots in Kenya at the same time as it happens as I see a young movie personality being led away in Los Angeles to serve out a few days in jail.

What is the most disturbing is that the more I look, the harder it becomes to find that which was the heart of America, the moral giants of the likes John Wayne and Jimmy Stewart once portrayed. It is no longer the Magnificent Seven coming to the defence of a peasant village to fighting against an evil oppressor. It is now one criminal gang in Oceans Eleven stealing millions from another criminal gambler who have become the heroes.

The same can be said for the international moral credibility of the US. Too often of recent the US has been seen as the aggressor in what is sees as its moral rectitude. A sign that it too has lost sight of what it was and fails completely to see what it has now become. It is no longer Audie Murphy fighting a heroes battle against a known and international enemy, it is the Murderous Bride from Kill Bill, seeking bloody vengeance for a personal wrong committed against her, an eye for an eye rather than seeking what we all know as legal and moral justice.

In its purpose of seeking to retain its significant power, it’s bully power if you will, it has engaged international sycophants to support its campaign yet they too have tired of being drawn into needless wars for the sake of preserving US hegemony and are gradually leaving it to go alone. Even those that it argues it has saved from oppression would go back to the way things were before the US came to their rescue, the real purpose becoming more and more evident that it was not in their favour all along but that of the US alone.

Over the past decade America has become increasingly a pariah in the international community if not the political arenas, a liability in friendship rather than an asset. An increasing number of Americans travel as faux-Canadians to avoid these conflicts. Listening to their politicians as they campaign for the Presidency, they are in disarray. Everyone on both sides is playing a different tune to their nearest rivals. Some support the wars other don’t. For the average voter, the options are too wide apart to reach any discernable conclusion such that they are left with petty issues such as tears and personal slights that affect the voting patterns.

The one quandary that I have with America is the homage paid to Israel over all other players in the Middle East Crisis. Israel is not the oppressed nation as say Kosovo or Iraq was, but it is the oppressor with people under its stewardship. Israel receives the endorsement and almost one third of all US foreign aid mostly to enable it to continue being the oppressor. It has dominated the lives of the Palestinians mercilessly so much so that young Israelis consistently regard them now as non-human. The power that Israel politicians have over the psych of average Americans is awe-inspiring. Two US academics, Steven Walt and John Mearsheimer wrote a paper on the influence that the Israeli lobby has over the American Congress, a paper that appears objective as I read it, yet as they argue, the lobby has caused them to be isolated in the US community for bringing this issue forward.

As an outsider, and when I discuss it with other outsiders or non-Americans, all we can do is wonder what it is that small nation has over the Americans that has caused them to lose all ability to be fair, the fight for what is the moral right rather than supporting one that has total domination over another oppressed people.

I have worked for some years in these current hotspots and can only reflect on the desire for the average citizen in Kosovo or Afghanistan, and that is to have peace, long lasting and sustainable peace. It would be a peace where they can raise their kids and build their fortunes and perhaps even aspire to be like Americans. In the short term however, while America continues to force its hand over their national sovereignty for its own will rather than theirs they no longer even dream about what could be theirs is solely a purpose to survive and watch their country slip further into a quagmire?

The dream I have now is that America should rediscover itself and remove its own blinkers on its failings. It is no longer reasonable to say world opinion does not matter. World opinion does matter and it is an inherent cause of the continued violence and distrust that we have become. The world requires a leader once more, a moral giant, not a nation that oppresses others nor supports oppression and can no longer distinguish the difference.

The notion of democracy for a country such as Afghanistan, a country that has been in political turmoil for the past century also demands considerable thought as to how that should be applied. The Bonn Agreement at the cessation of hostilities in 2001 established a pro-forma for the constitution and the form of government that would be introduced. There were some Afghans involved in the early discussions yet as a preliminary to the drafting of the constitution, little if any discussion took place in the communities and villages that make up the structure of this war ravaged land.

America, the most dominant architect to the constitution and the form of government that was to prevail looked no further than their own system of representational democracy, a means by which they could install an interim President with strong powers with a view to dominating the electoral process as the time came for elections.

The people of Afghanistan however know little about elections or even the sense of democracy but were excited at the prospect to the point that the fine detail was easily left without question. This was to be the first such exercise and was lauded as a significant transformation of a country that had until now been largely undemocratic, falling into the abyss of socialist thinking for more than half a century and before that a feudal kingdom. Even now the government bureaucrats still promote the notion of state run industries over a free market economy, stifling growth in these important economic agrarian areas.

What the US appeared to have had in mind was to retain an administration that would have the hallmarks of democracy yet leave the principal game play that would pay continued homage to them as their liberators. What has transpired is that the unelected and often criminal warlords who had served US interests in pursuing the Russians during the Cold War continue but now with some official blessing of both the US and the elected Afghan government who appoints them under Presidential decree. The constitutional Loya Jirga merely ratified his capacity to do that and their place in government, a point noted as early as the Bonn Agreement.

This point however destroyed the notion of democracy. Many of those appointments should have been held responsible for atrocious war crimes during the several years of civil war were now being rewarded by the US and following on its apron strings, the rest of the Western countries.

For the people of Afghanistan, many if not most have lost faith in the process of democracy. Their lives have not changed for the better as they had hoped but five years later they are mired in rampant corruption of the appointed officials, a debilitated economy with an illicit drug economy that stifles other economic pursuit, national security is as bad if not worse than it had been during the long periods of conflict and the ability to make change through the democratic process almost extinct.

The problem lay however with the initiators of the democratic process. It was bought about with little if any consideration for the population at large, the dynamics of the communities and tribal connections that influence the local political processes. It was as if the architects saw American representative democracy as the ideal solution failing completely to understand the political will and dynamic of Afghanistan, the very society that had little involvement in its design. Representative democracy with its party politics might suit a more fragmented society such as the US yet historically, previous incursions into the formation of top-down political parties in Afghanistan had transcended into corrupt and unworkable mechanism by which the country as a whole would be governed leading to a constant transition through coup and countercoup.

The present government has no particular strength in the community at large. The disenfranchised Taliban largely dictate security over almost two thirds of the rural electorate and can only be kept at bay albeit in a war zone condition by the large numbers of NATO and poorly trained national troops and police forces. The government has fallen into the depths of unmitigated corruption with positions reputedly being sold off by powerful Ministers that foster further corruptions down the line of their ministries.

The difficulty for Afghanistan is that the present form of government has been established to satisfy western demands of the country. A docile President that has an alignment with the US in particular, a legislature that will accede to similar economic and commercial dictates that in particular relate to the oil and gas fields and the political connections that it has with its neighbors.

The Cold War may have finished in this part of the world but the victory is still being decided.

What will happen in the future is any ones guess. Military experts from the west all agree that the battle for a secure Afghanistan will take a decade at least, disregarding the fact that the battle for total sovereignty over the Afghans had gone on for more than two hundred and fifty years without success. It is as if the conquerors have failed to learn any lessons from all the battle beforehand.

Of course more importantly, what is the ideal solution that will see relative peace transcend this beautiful if not badly damaged country politically and socially. Afghanistan is, like its neighbors, dominated by its religion, Islam. What many in the west fail to comprehend is however, that Islam is not just a religion, it transcends every aspect of daily life in these feudal communities. Without understanding this and determined by the austerity that the Taliban imposed, the west have presumed to have a government that largely negates this religious idealism and allowed it to only enter as a final condition that the new laws will not go against the principals of Islam.

How to serve the democratic process remains aloof from the present masters of its destiny. If the interests of the people and peace for the region were truly the ambitions, other forms of democracy perhaps should have been considered at the onset.

Experience has shown that all forms of top down government in Afghanistan have failed and failed dismally yet at the community and village level there is democratic process of administration that allows the people to participate in a more compelling form of government, that of direct democracy. With some modifications to its guidelines allow the landless and the women of the community to participate, this provides some impetus to a final solution, a form of direct democracy similar to that which functions in a somewhat peaceful Switzerland and in a less transparent manner although equally Islamic country, Libya. What direct democracy can do in these communities, is eliminate the power structures that prevail with strong individuals at the top with sufficient military might they have acquired over the past thirty years from dominating the political landscape. These communities provide the representation to the next level at district, provincial and then national government. At each stage the representative is not sealed into power by a political gerrymander but remains constantly answerable to the will of those committees that nominate them.

The need for a strong leader is insufficient if he is unable to exercise strong and at times barbaric discipline over those that resist the government. Karzai is a strong leader however he also lacks the capacity to rule according to the dictates that an unruly and insecure electorate demands. The principal key to Karzai retaining western support however is his loyalty to his sponsors and in particular to the US for which until recently he retained dual citizenship as have a number of those he has appointed, a policy that is not always in the best interest of his electorate.

To regain the total will of the people, they too need to be drawn into the democratic process, one where they have a determination over the running of and to contribute into the eventual peace process with its present antagonists that is necessary for their country to move forward.

Ideally, Afghanistan was presented with a new beginning on the routing of the Taliban and the backing by the US of a new western style democratic government. The reality however has been less dramatic. Afghanistan in 2007 is as lawless and disrupted as it was during the civil wars with more than 40,000 international troops in the country, more than 5000 people being killed in violent attacks since it was liberated, 100,000 people have been displaced due to the fighting in the southern provinces, development is stagnating, the promised democracy floundering under the weight of corruption and flailing institutional capacity along with an opium trade that now provides 92 percent of the world’s supply and constitutes 50 percent of the national GDP.
Where did it all go so wrong?

At the onset of 2001 and the initial promise of some billions of dollars in international assistance, the people of Afghanistan had reason to believe that their lives would change. Even though the country remains steadfastly Islamic, the severity of the Taliban rule had faded giving prospect for schools to be recovered and the expectation that the girls of the towns and the villages would be able to attend them and the people could live their lives with more liberty although greater change will take years. Village people as they do in most of Asia see that the means to climb out of their poverty is through the advent of education of their children.
The difficulty has been that the west, and in particular the US has largely been diverted with the invasion of Iraq shortly after and the initial thrust by the US forces of routing out the terrorists as opposed to providing any semblance of nation building although this has now become an unfortunately belated priority.
The government was resurrected on the basis of past allegiances and not on the basis of capacity rendering managerial skill and facility within the government vacant. The influx of international organizations were vying for the local expertise and paying up to five times that of the government services consumed all of the talent leaving those warlords appointed to the Ministry positions to in turn appoint family and tribal members to all the positions within the ministry. This not only afforded them protection from below, it facilitated the corrupt practices that has blemished and held back the progress of the country ever since.
Much of the existing problems today arrive through the corruption at the top of the administration. Regional Governors have a large hand in the production of opium clearing out fields of opposition growers as a sign of doing something positive while allowing production in their own fields to continue unimpeded. It is even reported that the brother of the President is a major figure in the opium production and international distribution in the south of the country where the majority of the present fighting is taking place.
With the invasion by the US, they facilitated the existing warlords whom they had allied with during the war against the Russians to assume command of strategic Governorships and ministerial positions, many still retaining these posts now even though a much-touted democratic electoral process has taken place. As time passes however they are cementing their position with even greater firmness that it will prove almost impossible without a major recovery at the top to eliminate them.
The opium trade has also usurped the economy to the point that more than 3.3 million people are reportedly involved in it out of 22 million and more than 3 billion dollars a year being invested into the national budget through its international trade. The task of removing it is being rendered almost impossible with a dramatic change in the way the country approaches the issues.
To recover, Afghanistan is going to require a complete change of conditions by the west. No longer can they rely upon the weak structures of government that President Kazai is able to offer but they need to insist that real power and corresponding real accountability is afforded to the people. The centrist government and the pre-drafted constitution have proven to be an abysmal failure and have no significant effect other than within Kabul itself and even that is suspect. The up-scaled drug trade in the major markets of Europe and the US has a cost estimated to be 20 times that derived in Afghanistan, some 60 billion dollars worldwide. Can the world afford to allow it to continue?
Prior to the war Afghanistan was at the lowest point in its economic and social history with all the development indicators pointing it out to be one of the poorest countries in the world. The approach by the US was inadequate and cavalier paying no serious attention to the economic recovery required. If democratization and development is a real concern as was the promise of 2001, the international cost to bring the country back into a path away from the criminal activity that now consumes it will be massive and at least be equal to that which is being derived illegally and take a generation at least. That cost in many ways will have to be born by the west.