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.

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. 

Of recent times, I have decided to scale back my thankless pursuit of money and opt to establish a more balanced set of objectives before me for the future. Now if you read my posts you will have established I am generally a liberal sort of person. For the past ten years I have been engaged in the humanitarian business, another thankless task. I have worked for non-government organizations in war torn high risk countries for the pittance they pay, I have been a UN volunteer living on a ridiculously small stipend, more recently I have worked for one of the beltway bandits sucking up US taxpayer money faster than the new hoover it has bought for our maid.  But things have changed, for my next exercise  I am looking not so much to how much I can make, but to how much I can do.

The beltway income has been sufficient to lay down a sizable deposit on a small house in Penang in Malaysia where we are currently setting down some roots and it will also pay to undertake a major renovation of the building before we finally decide if we will live in it or rent it out. The building however happens to be within the boundaries of a newly conscripted UNESCO World Heritage site which draws me into the reasons to do what I am doing. The idea that I can spend time on a project that will with some degree of personal satisfaction, recover some aspect of a history that has been allowed to degrade appeals to me. What I need to be conscious of is the possibility of over gentrification of the region and even in my own little project I am in since it is the cultural and ethnic inhabitants that form the heritage significance as much as it is the architecture.

What I am now also engaged in is putting together a proposal that will enable me to take on bigger projects that are not just for the moment, I will be able to create projects that, like buying art, are done as much for the sake that the end result can be enjoyed and is a sound investment.

I am reading a column by George Monbiot in the Guardian where  he is lamenting the fact that a TESCO is coming to his small Welsh village. The people who live in the village do so because they are satisfied with the slower pace it offers them and would seem to be universally driven to ward off the TESCO if they can however the inevitability of big business succeeding is ever present. The same can be said about my new project in Penang although not for the same reasons.

Penang is very busy. It has a multicultural community that over the years have bought in a diversity from all over Asia. Yet it is slowly dying. Over the past few years there have been local developers wanting to pul down part of the decayed buildings and construct multi storied hotels and office blocks. Thankfully they have been resisted. This small segment of the city should be enabled to retain its historic outlook, it will nto make one iota of difference to the world at large if these rich developers do not have their way.

The city blocks do however need developing and undertaken on a larger scale than private investment can manage before they totally disappear into a rotting mess. Money nees to be provided to preserve the cultural backdrop against which we measure our progress, money should be invested simply because the outcome provides us with pleasure. Not every thing we do has to be for a profit.

When I finish my tour in Afghanistan at the end of this month, I already have interested some major financiers in my proposition that there is investment potential in conserving Penang’s heritage. In it I am appealing to individual investors who care not just about the next tenth of a percent, but that they are contributing to worthwhile projects that will also repay due to the fact that their projects have greater interest than the availability of a new t-shirt. it may not be for everyone but then it doesn’t require everyone, just enough.

I was reading an article this morning in the British Guardian Online. It was about an isolated tribe of Jarawa natives who were starting to come out of the jungle in the Andaman and Nicobar Islands for the first time and how they are beginning to interface with the tourists and recent arrivals. The writer, quite rightly alluded to the difficulties the tribes faces in the future in terms of integration, adapting to diseases, alcoholism, materialism etc as they become more and more integrated into the western notion of development. Necessarily these are traditionally poor people who have survived for centuries by their instinct and what the jungle can provide for them, the thing for the moment is that, they do not know they are poor, nor do they appear to care or are in any particular need of what the west can provide for them. Unfortunately that will progressively change as well meaning, but poorly advised “assistants” help them adapt to the western world. The richness of their present simple life will eventually become the symbols  of their future poverty.

Jarawa women of the Andaman Islands

It got me to thinking however about the general notion that we see indigenous peoples need to reach levels in their lifestyles that are consistent with western norms that may be askew. The Jarawa seem to have an idylic lifestyle. They are not constrained by any moral conventions that constrain the outside world, they live a semi nomadic existence where there appears no need for anything other than what their surroundings can provide for them. Ecologically and environmentally, the Jarawa appear to leave a negligible footprint on their surroundings yet seem happy with that even to the extent of repelling intruders with spears and arrows until quite recently. However, as they start to integrate as they are now doing, their lives will become irreversibly changed and it needs to be decided soon if that is for the better or should they be protected.

Their future is perhaps written for them as development takes hold of their tiny island. Inevitably they will through contact establish needs they previously did not have or could not obtain from the jungle.  Sweets, clothing, housing, liquor, medicine, education, money, communications, transport and a host of other symbols of development and advanced society. Through bitter experience of how other indigenous people have fared in the past, they will not fare well. They will lose their skills at living with nature, they will contract diseases, they will become indolent, always living around the edges of society eventually becoming a serial pest as that society loses its tolerance with their slow adaptation to western expectation. They will live in hastily constructed shanties at the edge of civilization instead of in their organized jungle village.

Going by the conventions set down by agencies such as the United Nations Human Development Reports, the Jarawa people will be included in deserving the minimum standards laid out for their existence yet what that fails to acknowledge is that these standards would generally exceed their current expectations and what is more, it needs to be asked if in fact they are needed or should what we be doing is to maintain the status quo.

Is development only a western perception that would enable them to live in a developing western world with western needs. Poverty world wide is measured against an immeasurable standard if say compared to the Jarawa people. The same, to some extent can be said for peoples all over the world in different locations and different sets of ideals. We tend to presume that what we can offer is what is best and fail to understand that sometimes what they have might well be what is in fact best after all.

For several years I have worked in Afghanistan. When I first arrived I had the opportunity to travel to remote regions of Nangahar province where I met with villagers whom I considered had an almost idyllic if not austere life, similar to that of the Jarawa however with a greater degree of development you might say. They had little to be sure however they had enough to live a lifestyle that was free of material needs. They live in mud houses with a mud floor and rarely a window. They grow and eat their own simple foods. They do not own cars and they do not travel far. They are uneducated but they can live under extreme weather conditions as they have done for centuries. It is rich in its simplicity. There were growing issues of education of which they had little and medical resources of which they had none and much of the issues of maternal and natal health were frequent problems that needed resolutions. Much of it compared to others who had only recently acquired these services.

Yet there is resistance. In the far reaches of Nuristan province to the east of the country, the local people are resisting all comers. That includes the US military and the Taliban as well as the development community. Their villages are only accessible by foot tracks in the mountains that even the donkeys find difficult to traverse. They don’t want change and will fight to prevent its arrival.

In terms of their material wealth however, apart from the land beneath their feet, they have little to show of wealth. Most Afghans live in harsh inhospitable environments where an austere religious lifestyle and work at subsistence levels of farm production that regulates their daily lives yet, for the most part, provides a sense of order and a level of social security within each tiny hamlet.  Many never venturing out even to the next village but remain within the family compound. It is only when change takes place that dislocations to these tiny communities begin to eventuate. They are poor however their poverty is relative to a system that they are being introduced to that advocates development.

A question that needs to be asked, is do they really need it until they decide for them self? Is development aiding in the destruction of societies? Well meaning but often self serving aid agencies who set an agenda that is rarely based on what these communities actually need as opposed to what they might say they want or promote ideas the aid groups can sell to them and proceed to offer a change to their lifestyles. A move towards one that emulates their own along with their own particular set of values, changing social structures, material wealth and complete with vague notions of democracy and the inherent politics of gender, education and health care.

Development at peoples own pace can be good. Development at paces they cannot maintain is not good. For the Jarawa people, development will most likely only bring them poverty and hardship that they otherwise would never have known.