Afghanistan will thrive if only we let it

20 December 2008

Clare Lockhart, who has advised both the UN and the Afghan government, says that the international aid community needs to trust the Afghan people

Increasingly the media reports Afghanistan as a disaster story. Casualty lists from Helmand and other provinces sit side by side with accounts of millions of pounds’ worth of aid wasted and booming opium crops. No wonder then that politicians and journalists have begun to debate the wisdom of remaining committed to Afghanistan. In turn, the Afghan population has begun to doubt the commitment of its international partners.

But the accepted story is never the whole story, and that is especially true of Afghanistan. The real truth about the country is that despite the many missteps, there is good cause for hope, and reason to believe that the country can pull itself out of its current chaos. The story of hope — the one the newspapers currently ignore — is that, faced with the monumental tasks of stabilising their country and creating better lives and livelihoods for their families, Afghans managed to create a path to peace after 9/11. Between 2001 and 2005, the country climbed up the Transparency International Index, not a suicide bomb went off, and by January 2005 most international partners declared the task of stabilising Afghanistan done. These successes derived not from the international aid system but Afghans.

Afghan leaders committed themselves to public services and designed a series of ‘national programmes’ to alter the country’s fate. Their approach turned the traditional development paradigm on its head. Instead of the money going through layers and layers of contracts, with foreign personnel managing each step of the process, the money went directly to villages. This created a functioning network of support that reached across tens of thousands of communities and millions of people across the countryside, delivering tangible support, both in stabilising their environment and creating a foundation upon which they could build. These Afghan schemes remain the chief source of hope for the future.