Pubdate: Fri, 20 Nov 2009
Source: Times, The (UK)
Copyright: 2009 Times Newspapers Ltd
Contact:  http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/454
Author: Hugh Thomson
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/topic/Afghanistan
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/topic/Taliban

WIN HEARTS AND MINDS IN AFGHANISTAN TO WIN THE WAR

Troop Numbers Are Not the Top Priority. We Must Build Schools, Wells
and Factories If Ordinary People Are to Back Us

Three years ago I travelled across Afghanistan to make a film about
what conditions for ordinary Afghans were like. We wanted to make it
in the winter of 2006-07 because there was talk of a spring offensive
from the Taleban -- which indeed came, and came, and has kept coming
ever since.

The difference between then and now is striking. Five years after the
allied invasion in 2001, we could travel in relative security to every
corner of the country except Helmand and the south. Kabul felt safe --
we went shopping in the old hippy hang-outs along Chicken Street; in
Herat, near the border with Iran, we went looking for carpets (having
a former Taleban fixer with me helped to persuade the shop to give me
a good price).

However, it was clear that ordinary Afghans felt both their Government
and the West had failed in the task of reconstructing a country of
which the economy had been shot to pieces.

It is not widely known that the Russians systematically smashed many
of the ancient irrigation systems during the brutal war against the
Mujahidin in the 1980s. Opium poppies are one of the few crops that
can be grown without those canals and dams: a huge but vital project
if alternative crops are to be developed.

It's an easier calculation to send more troops than to build a
factory. The UK's annual military budget for Afghanistan is in the
billions; that of aid in the millions. At breakfast in our hotel, not
one item had been grown or made in the country. Even chicken has to be
flown in from Poland -- although it has been shown in Pakistan that
poultry and dairy farming can transform rural communities with some
seed money.

Infant mortality rates in hospitals -- a key index of healthcare --
were still worse than almost anywhere in Africa. Money was simply not
getting through to the places that needed it. A headmistress in the
northern town of Taloqan, far from the Taleban powerbase, told us
that, despite numerous appeals, they had not received funding to
reopen her girls school properly.

I've just received a letter from the admirable voluntary worker with
whom we stayed in Taloqan. His work was in remote small villages
building schools and wells. Now he is almost unable to leave Taloqan
and can see the villagers only when they come to town. It's a tale
repeated by many aid workers. Kabul is attacked by suicide bombers who
have penetrated government ministries and the main "foreigners'
compound" hotel. Aid workers and journalists have been kidnapped in
just about every corner of the land.

What has gone wrong? It is not just military indecision. During the
first five years, the Allies failed to provide the financial
infrastructure necessary for the reconstruction of the country. This
may be partly because the British Government pursued a policy
described by David Page, of the charity Afghanaid, as the
"militarisation of aid". Rather than give money to more stable parts
of the country where there was a real chance of getting the economy
restarted, funds were directed to areas of military engagement, such
as Helmand, in the hope that "hearts and minds" would be won over.

This sounds fine in theory, but in practice money spent rebuilding a
war zone -- with the likely prospect that your work will be bombed to
smithereens -- might have been better targeted at places where full
economic regeneration had some chance. No wonder previously peaceful
areas are so susceptible to the Taleban advance when they see no gain
from that peace. Samangan in the north was desperate for a dam to
irrigate wheatfields and orchards. Instead a far more expensive
project took shape in Helmand, with frantic military engagements to
try to hold it.

Nor is Britain's insistence on directing funds through the Afghan
Government, rather than directly to aid organisations or local
government, the most efficient way of getting money where it matters.
Put bluntly, a great deal gets sliced off. Why do politicians so
consistently sideline the need for economic reconstruction? Perhaps it
is easier to deal in troop numbers or regional politics than the
complex long-term question of civilian aid. In all recent discussion
of Afghanistan this has been skated over.

When Nick Clegg, the Liberal Democrat leader, recently listed in these
pages his four requirements for success in Afghanistan -- to make the
Karzai Government more accountable, to negotiate with neighbouring
countries, to shift military strategy and to talk to the Taleban -- he
signally failed to address the one central objective without which all
others are pointless, -- as do other politicians.

Without an immediate increase in the civil aid it won't make any
difference how many troops are sent -- and we risk repeating the same
mistake made after the invasion, when, buoyed up by military success,
the Allies completely failed at the far more important task of
economic reconstruction. The amount we send for reconstruction should
be as important as the number of troops; yet the money spent on aid is
a tiny fraction of the military budget -- less than a tenth, according
to the OECD. Let's see a commitment to raise and target it properly --
then talk about how many more lives we propose to risk.

To find out about organisations that ensure aid goes directly to those
who need it, visit www.afghanaid.org.uk or www.afghanconnection.org
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MAP posted-by: Richard Lake