RESEARCH PAPER SERIES, 2021–22      23 December 2021

Aid to Afghanistan since 2001

Dr Angela Clare

Foreign Affairs, Defence and Security

1 Executive summary

• The Taliban’s rapid return to power in August 2021 shocked the world and left the country without an effective government and heading towards a humanitarian crisis. There remains huge uncertainty around how basic supplies, security and economic activity can be restored.

• The Taliban controlled Afghanistan between 1996 and 2001. At that time the war-ravaged country had among the world’s lowest life expectancy and highest maternal mortality rates. Millions had little access to food, housing, health or physical security.

• The country received huge inflows of aid over the following decade, tapering off with the drawdown of military forces from 2012. According to the World Bank, Afghanistan received US$77 billion in official development assistance between 2001 and 2019, over $1.5 billion of which Australia contributed.

• Afghanistan is a different country in 2021: its population has doubled, the country’s infrastructure has modernised, and a generation of young people and women, particularly in urban centres, has enjoyed education and employment opportunities not previously available.

• But the challenges involved in rebuilding and stabilising the country proved too ambitious, with the US and its partners failing to resolve the conflict or to build the institutions needed to effectively govern the country. Critics point to a long list of mistakes made by the US and its allies.

• Australian aid shared the international community’s broad objective of state building, contributing to better governance and stability, and poverty reduction through economic growth and service delivery across most key sectors, including health, education and agriculture.

• The 2013 Senate inquiry into Australia’s aid program to Afghanistan found that Australia’s support for service delivery programs—particularly in health and education—was more successful than governance and capacity building programs, in line with the broader aid experience.

• In May 2021, Prime Minister Morrison confirmed that Australia ‘remains committed to supporting an Afghan-led peaceful resolution to the conflict in Afghanistan, and to helping preserve the gains of the past 20 years’. He also noted that Australia’s bilateral relationship with Afghanistan would continue, with development assistance to total $200 million over 2021–2024.

Contents

Executive summary

Introduction

Overview of aid since 2001

Figure 1: total Official Development Assistance to Afghanistan, 2001–2019, US$

What was achieved?

Australian aid

Figure 2: Australian aid to Afghanistan, 2001 to 2021 (2020–21 prices)

Strategic failures

Corruption

The challenge of nation-building

Future prospects

2 

Introduction

The Taliban’s rapid return to power in August 2021 shocked the world and left the country reeling, without an effective government and heading towards a humanitarian crisis. The foreign aid on which the country relied has been cut off, and there remains huge uncertainty around how basic supplies, security and economic activity can be restored.

Since 2001 the US-led international mission in Afghanistan aimed to ensure Afghanistan did not provide a sanctuary for terrorists and other extremists, and that the government was able to ‘deliver essential services, drive economic growth and address the causes of instability’.0F¹ Non-military aid was central to rebuilding and stabilising the country. Given the mission’s failure to build a viable state, many are asking what the aid achieved and what should have been done differently.

This paper surveys some of the commentary and analysis on international reconstruction efforts since 2001, with a particular focus on the role of non-military aid and the lessons emerging from the Afghanistan experience.

1 Overview of aid since 2001

The task of rebuilding Afghanistan after the defeat of the Taliban was immense. The Taliban controlled Afghanistan between 1996 and 2001, drawing international outrage for its violent and repressive rule and human rights abuses, including restrictions on the rights of women and extra-judicial killings and punishments. At that time the war-ravaged country had among the world’s lowest life expectancy and highest maternal mortality rates. Millions had little access to food, housing, health or physical security.1F² Already one of the world’s most severely landmine-contaminated countries, Afghanistan needed extensive mine and cluster bomb clearance, disarmament and rebuilding of infrastructure.2F³

The country received huge inflows of aid over the following decade, tapering off with the drawdown of military forces from 2012. According to the World Bank, Afghanistan received US$77 billion in official development assistance (ODA) between 2001 and 2019.3F⁴ Of this, Australia has contributed over $1.5 billion (around US$1.07 billion at 2018 prices). The US was the largest donor by a large margin, providing an estimated 54 per cent of aid over that period, while the EU, Japan, Germany and the UK were among the next largest donors.4F⁵ The US spent an estimated total of US$146 billion on ‘nation-building’ or reconstruction efforts in Afghanistan, of which US$36.23 billion was spent on governance and development and US$4.43 billion was spent on humanitarian support.5F⁶

This aid provided real gains for Afghan people, including increased life expectancy, improved infrastructure, economic growth, and expanded access to education and basic health services. In 2021, Afghanistan is a different country: its population has doubled, the country’s infrastructure has modernised and a generation of young people and women, particularly in urban centres, has enjoyed education and employment opportunities not previously available.

But the challenges involved in rebuilding and stabilising the country proved too ambitious, with the US and its partners failing to resolve the conflict or to build the institutions needed to effectively govern the country. Over the last 20 years Afghanistan has remained one of the world’s most fragile states, characterised by a lack of political legitimacy, endemic corruption, high levels of poverty, displaced populations and ongoing conflict—conditions that undermine economic and social development.

Critics point to a long list of mistakes made by the US and its allies in Afghanistan, many of which are common to state-building efforts in other fragile states, that suggest the present situation has been ‘20 years in the making’: a narrow and short-term focus that lacked coordination with political and security actors and that reflected the biases and interests of donors, often failing to align with the interests of ordinary Afghan people or the realities of what was happening on the ground. In the end, the Afghan people would not risk their lives for a government critics judged to be corrupt and self-serving.

At the peak of aid flows between 2010 and 2012 Afghanistan was the largest recipient of aid in the world, receiving $US6.5 billion in 2010—almost twice as much as any other country (see Figure 1). Total non-military assistance to Afghanistan reached the equivalent of 100 per cent of the country’s GDP, decreasing over the following decade to 43 per cent in 2020.6F⁷ Security spending was the main component of this support, comprising 30 per cent of GDP—ten times higher than the average for low-income countries. Australian aid comprised only a small part of this total—an estimated 1.5 per cent of all aid to the country by 2013.

Figure 1: total Official Development Assistance to Afghanistan, 2001–2019, US$

*Net ODA received, constant 2018 US$ prices.

Source: Net official development assistance received (current US$) – Afghanistan, The World Bank: Data, website accessed 29 November 2021.

Initial development priorities for the reconstruction effort were to rebuild the country’s administrative and financial systems; provide access to education—especially for girls—and health and sanitation; build infrastructure, in particular, roads, electricity and telecommunications; and revitalise agriculture and rural development, including food security and irrigation systems.7F⁸

Aid was provided through bilateral and multilateral channels, UN agencies, NGOs and the private sector. Over 20 UN agencies were coordinated by the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA), a political and development mission established in 2002 at the request of the government of Afghanistan. NGOs and civil society organisations were at the fore of delivering basic services and in providing ‘the momentum for Afghanistan’s development as a pluralistic society’. In 2004, the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (UNOCHA) estimated that over 180 NGOs were implementing World Food Program activities in Afghanistan.

The largest share of aid to the former Afghan government was through the World Bank-managed, multi-donor Afghanistan Reconstruction Trust Fund (ARTF), established to provide a coordinated financing mechanism for the Afghan Government’s budget and national programs, delivering support for agriculture, education, governance, health, infrastructure and rural development. As at April 2021, 34 donors had contributed more than US$13.07 billion to the fund. The ARTF was Australia’s most significant development investment in Afghanistan, with estimated contributions of US$460 million.

The US and its allies—including Australia—also set up ‘Provincial Reconstruction Teams’, comprising military and civilian personnel based in Afghanistan’s provinces, to provide security for aid activities and to ‘help humanitarian assistance or reconstruction tasks in areas with ongoing conflict or high levels of insecurity’, through which an estimated 20 per cent of aid flowed.

2 What was achieved?

Despite the formidable challenges involved, aid helped bring about some ‘remarkable’ development successes in Afghanistan over the last 20 years. These include:

• Education and literacy: the proportion of girls attending secondary school rose from 6.3 per cent in 2003 to 40 per cent in 2018, while boys saw an increase from 18.2 to 70 per cent over this period. Literacy rates improved markedly. In 2018 female literacy in the 15–24 age group was 56 per cent compared to 74 per cent for men, up from 11 per cent and 46 per cent respectively in 1979.8F⁹ Banned from participating in higher education under the Taliban, women comprised an estimated 28 per cent of university students by 2017.

• Women’s rights and opportunities: recognition of women’s rights expanded, including through legal protections and reforms, support for legal aid organisations, and the training of women lawyers, prosecutors, and judges. Afghanistan’s new constitution, ratified in 2004, required that women hold at least 27 per cent of seats in the lower house of parliament, and by 2020, 21 per cent of Afghan civil servants were women (compared with almost none under Taliban rule), of which 16 per cent were at senior management levels.

• Improved state treatment of ethnic Hazaras, among the world’s most persecuted peoples. Since 2001, Hazaras have had greater access to political participation, and gained access to university education and civil service employment.

• Improved access to basic health care contributed to a drop in Afghanistan’s maternal mortality rate from 1,300 deaths per 100,000 live births in 2002 to 638 deaths per 100,000 births in 2017. Life expectancy improved from 42 years in 2004 to 62 years in 2010, largely driven by declines in child mortality. Women’s life expectancy increased from 56 years in 2001 to 66 in 2017.

• Economic growth: large flows of aid—particularly in the decade to 2010—saw significant economic gains, with Afghanistan’s per capita gross domestic product rising from $21.80 in 2002 to $647 in 2018. Afghanistan’s economy is now nearly five times larger than it was 20 years ago, with GDP increasing from US$4.05 billion in 2002 to US$19.8 billion in 2020. Access to electricity increased from 7 per cent of the rural population in 2005 to 97 per cent in 2016.

Decades of conflict had taken a heavy toll on the country, however, and many of the gains made were ‘partial and fragile’. By the end of the mission almost half the population continued to live in poverty, with ‘stark differences’ across regions. Government institutions remained weak, dependent on external finance and unable to deliver services to remote areas, while armed conflict continued to inflict heavy costs on the civilian population. Since 2001 an estimated 241,000 combatants, civilians, aid workers and others have died in the Afghanistan and Pakistan conflict zone and many thousands more have been displaced due to conflict and violence. In 2020 alone, an estimated 400,000 were displaced.9F¹⁰

Cities benefited more in terms of aid and security than populations in rural areas, where more than 70 per cent of people live. According to women’s rights group Medica Mondiale, the significant legislative progress female activists achieved after 2001 ‘failed to become lived reality for most women. Patriarchal structures, religious fundamentalism, corruption and the all-prevailing insecurity prevent this’.10F¹¹ Gender-based violence remains a major concern.

Agriculture, ‘the backbone’ of Afghanistan’s economy and a major source of livelihood for many living below the poverty line, has been a crucial casualty: in 2019 UNOCHA reported that the sector was ‘a shell of its former self’, with production half that of its pre-1979 level. Today Afghanistan imports a significant amount of its staples, including much of its wheat, fuel and electricity, increasing its vulnerability to food insecurity.

Assessing the overall impact of aid in Afghanistan is a complex task. A 2018 evaluation of aid in Afghanistan noted that there were over 30 different international donors disbursing aid in Afghanistan, ‘each with their own agenda and aid agreement with the government, and effective donor coordination and harmonisation is not a practice adopted universally’. Overall, a lack of transparency and ‘a huge shortage of impartial information’ has prevented accurate assessments of development efforts, and long-term outcomes remain difficult to predict.11F¹²

That said, support for basic services—namely health and education—was more successful than governance and state-buildings efforts. Achieving progress in these areas was hampered not only by the inherent difficulty of working in a fragile state, but by failures in regard to coordination, management, resourcing and overall strategy. From the beginning the Afghan Government and the international community recognised the importance of coordinating and aligning assistance with the Afghan Government’s priorities, and of increasing the proportion of funds channelled through the national budget.12F¹³ But aid could not be easily disentangled from the international community’s strategic and security objectives, which did not always align with Afghanistan’s development interests. The Taliban’s resurgence from 2006 has been linked with a rise in anti-Western sentiment among Afghan people, feelings ‘nurtured by the sluggish pace of reconstruction, allegations of prisoner abuse at U.S. detention facilities, widespread corruption in the Afghan government, and civilian casualties caused by U.S. and NATO bombings’.

3 Australian aid

The Australian Government viewed its aid to Afghanistan as part of ‘an integrated whole-of-government effort involving interlinked security, diplomatic and development objectives’.13F¹⁴ Prime Minister John Howard emphasised the link between the Government’s security and nation-building goals in his announcement of an Australian Defence Force Reconstruction Task Force in 2006:

The security challenge is twofold: first to provide a secure environment to allow Afghans to rebuild their society free from violence and extremism; and secondly to strengthen Afghanistan’s institutions so that they can provide a stronger framework for democratisation, religious tolerance and economic growth. Of course, the two elements are linked. Removal of the immediate dangers facing the Afghan people is essential, but so too is ensuring that Afghanistan has the infrastructure and institutions to support its democratically elected government and dealing with those who may attempt to threaten Afghanistan’s democracy and security in the future.14F¹⁵

Australian aid has shared the international community’s broad objective of state building, contributing to better governance and stability, and poverty reduction through economic growth and service delivery across most key sectors, including health, education and agriculture. As a relatively small donor its aid was delivered through pooled funding mechanisms to maximise effectiveness—such as the ARTF and the UN Development Programme’s Law and Order Trust Fund for Afghanistan (LOTFA). It also worked with NGOs ‘in niche areas where we can add the most value’, and delivered aid through the Uruzgan Provincial Reconstruction Team (PRT).

As shown in Figure 2, Australia’s aid flows tailed off significantly from their high in 2011–12, following the Government’s cuts to the aid budget in 2014 and the tapering of international flows after the 2014 transition.

Figure 2: Australian aid to Afghanistan, 2001 to 2021 (2020–21 prices)

Note: 2021–22 figures do not include any post-Budget commitments.

Source: DFAT statistical summaries of the aid budget, various years.

2013 Senate inquiry

The comprehensive 2013 Senate inquiry into Australia’s aid program to Afghanistan found that Australia’s support for service delivery programs—particularly in health and education—were more successful than governance and capacity building programs, in line with the broader aid experience. The inquiry also found that funds directed through the Afghan government systems, notably through the generally well-regarded World Bank-managed Afghanistan Reconstruction Trust Fund (ARTF), were ‘more successful in promoting government ownership and aligning projects with government priorities’.15F¹⁶

Commenting on the 2013 Senate inquiry, the only major review so far undertaken, Stephen Howes and Jonathan Pryke from ANU’s Development Policy Centre argued that the overall objective of Australia’s aid at that time—‘building the Afghan Government’s capacity to deliver services and provide economic opportunities to its people’—was inappropriate:

Capacity building is the holy grail of aid, but […] the ability of aid to build capacity is severely limited. The roots of shallow capacity are typically political rather than technical. Government capacity shows little sign of improvement in Afghanistan, so if that is the objective of Australian aid, then it has failed.16F¹⁷

Fortunately, they went on to argue, most Australian aid did not in fact involve capacity-building but the delivery of services, largely delivered through the ARTF and NGOs. Australia also funded multilateral agencies such as the World Food Program to provide humanitarian support, and partnered with agencies such as the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research to coordinate its support of sectoral support for agriculture.17F¹⁸

The Senate inquiry largely supported Australia’s mix of aid investments, noting that ‘promoting government ownership and aligning projects with government priorities’ through the ARTF helps ‘prevent wastage of funds, encourages stronger coordination between projects (less duplication and better targeted) and is better suited to counter corruption’. It also acknowledged the important role of NGOs in filling the gap in the Afghan Government’s ability to deliver frontline services.

It expressed concerns about the ADF’s involvement in aid delivery, however, which largely occurred in Uruzgan province. The Committee heard concerns that too close a link between military and development activities could be counter-productive, inadvertently intensify conflicts, and encourage corruption—the so-called ‘militarization of aid’.18F¹⁹ The Senate report noted that this strategy—widely criticised for its ‘ad hoc approach to security and development’—posed a potential danger to aid workers and potentially undermined local leadership by linking aid to military rather than humanitarian purposes. In 2010 around 20 per cent of Australia’s aid was delivered through the Uruzgan PRT.19F²⁰

To ensure development gains made were not lost, the Senate report concluded that Australia should consolidate its focus on those areas in which Australia’s aid had been most effective: education, agriculture, mining, and promoting the status of women. The Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade’s annual program performance reports for Afghanistan show that the aid program has continued to evolve over the last few years, with a broad focus on better governance and economic growth, women’s and girls’ empowerment (including education), and humanitarian support. Since 2020, Australia has supported the country’s COVID-19 response.

4 Strategic failures

In its August 2021 assessment of US reconstruction efforts in Afghanistan, the US Government’s Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR)—the office tasked with reviewing US reconstruction funding in Afghanistan—described the US effort as ‘20 one-year reconstruction efforts rather than one 20-year effort’.

SIGAR noted in its 30 October Quarterly Report to Congress that it had reported for years on serious, systemic problems which applied ‘to all U.S. assistance in Afghanistan’ in areas such as security, rule of law, corruption, government capability and legitimacy, fiscal capacity, and sustainability of institutions and programs’. The report identified five primary areas of concern:

• inadequate planning

• poor quality assurance

• poor security

• questionable sustainability

• pervasive corruption.

SIGAR argued that the US lacked the information and understanding of local conditions critical to stabilising and rebuilding the country, that US officials underestimated the time and resources needed, ‘prioritized their own political preferences for what they wanted reconstruction to look like, rather than what they could realistically achieve’, and set ‘timelines in the mistaken belief that a decision in Washington could transform the calculus of complex Afghan institutions, powerbrokers, and communities contested by the Taliban’:

By design, these timelines often ignored conditions on the ground and forced reckless compromises in U.S. programs, creating perverse incentives to spend quickly and focus on short-term, unsustainable goals that could not create the conditions to allow a victorious U.S. withdrawal. Rather than reform and improve, Afghan institutions and powerbrokers found ways to co-opt the funds for their own purposes, which only worsened the problems these programs were meant to address. When U.S. officials eventually recognized this dynamic, they simply found new ways to ignore conditions on the ground. Troops and resources continued to draw down in full view of the Afghan government’s inability to address instability or prevent it from worsening.20F²¹

This lack of understanding meant that inappropriate models were imposed on Afghan institutions, often with damaging effects, according to the SIGAR report. The US Government:

… clumsily forced Western technocratic models onto Afghan economic institutions; trained security forces in advanced weapon systems they could not understand, much less maintain; imposed formal rule of law on a country that addressed 80 to 90 per cent of its disputes through informal means; and often struggled to understand or mitigate the cultural and social barriers to supporting women and girls. Without this background knowledge, U.S. officials often empowered powerbrokers who preyed on the population or diverted U.S. assistance away from its intended recipients to enrich and empower themselves and their allies. Lack of knowledge at the local level meant projects intended to mitigate conflict often exacerbated it, and even inadvertently funded insurgents.21F²²

The report claimed that the mission also lacked effective leadership, with the Department of State insufficiently resourced to undertake this role and the Department of Defence lacking the expertise to lead a complex reconstruction effort ‘with large economic and governance components’.22F²³

William Byrd (US Institute for Peace) also links the inability to stabilise the country with the strategic failure to engage with local political conditions, citing the example of programs for demobilisation, disarmament, and reintegration (DDR) of combatants:

DDR has absorbed more than $360 million in aid over the past two decades. Aside from programmatic weaknesses, poor implementation and corruption, the first two DDR programs targeted anti-Taliban armed forces and militias while the programs for Taliban fighters sought, unsuccessfully, to encourage defections and weaken the insurgents but did not support reconciliation between the two sides.

The most important lesson from Afghan and international experience is to shift from combatant-focused DDR — which can increase strains within communities and between combatants and victims, exacerbating grievances — to a community-based approach.23F²⁴

US analyst James Dobbins also argued that the US and its allies did not invest enough in the ‘foundational security required to build a functioning state’, comparing the amount invested in Bosnia—US$1,600 for each person each year for ‘the first several years after that war’—with the ‘paltry sum’ of US$50 per person in Afghanistan. Dobbins also contends that ‘critical mistakes’ were made in regard to security and reconstruction policies, permitting the eventual
re-emergence of the Taliban:

There were no substantial early efforts to build a national Afghan army or police force, which left security in the hands of predatory local warlords and made confronting returning Taliban fighters more difficult. There was no single point of leadership for the international reconstruction effort, which consequently lacked coherence. And, perhaps most significantly, it took U.S. officials several years to realize that although Pakistan had withdrawn its support for the Taliban government, it hadn’t abandoned the Taliban as an organization. After they were routed from Afghanistan, the Taliban’s leadership and the group’s remaining members were given sanctuary in Pakistan, where they recuperated, retrained, resupplied, and later restarted an insurgency in Afghanistan.24F²⁵

5 Corruption

A legacy of systemic corruption is seen as one of the most corrosive failings of the reconstruction effort. Reports routinely suggest that little aid made its way to the local level, and was instead siphoned off in large contracts, expensive consultancies and corruption. SIGAR found that of the $63 billion in US aid to Afghanistan since 2002, ‘a total of approximately $19 billion or 30 percent of the amount reviewed was lost to waste, fraud, and abuse’, a significant proportion by Western companies.25F²⁶

Sarah Chayes (Foreign Affairs) paints a disturbing picture of a system that served merely to enrich corrupt local officials and heads of companies bidding on US-funded contracts, undermining trust in the institutions the international community was trying to build:

… No one was comparing the actual quality of raw materials used with what was marked down in the budget. We Americans had no idea who we were dealing with.

Ordinary Afghans, on the other hand, could see who was getting rich. They noticed whose villages received the most lavish development projects. And Western civilian and military officials bolstered the standing of corrupt Afghan officials by partnering with them ostentatiously and unconditionally. They stood by their sides at ribbon cuttings and consulted them on military tactics. Those Afghan officials could then credibly threaten to call down a U.S. raid or an airstrike on anyone who got out of line.26F²⁷

A UK House of Commons Library report noted that a ‘rentier effect’ became increasingly evident, where vast quantities of aid were disbursed with little accountability to local communities, while foreign donors gained disproportionate influence. This resulted in a growing distrust of government by ordinary Afghans, reflected in voter turnout for presidential elections, which fell from 84 per cent in 2004 to just 19 per cent in 2019.27F²⁸

Corruption fuelled distrust of the US-backed Afghan Government, according to Clemence Landers and Rakan Aboneaaj (Center for Global Development), ‘to the point that over half of Afghan citizens believed corruption levels to be lower in Taliban-controlled areas’. It also ‘hollowed out’ the security forces, Kate Clark (Afghanistan Analysts Network) argued:

Fuel, food, medicine for wounded soldiers, jobs, all have been sold over the years, and this continued even as Afghanistan fell to the Taleban; on 1 August – less than three weeks ago – it was revealed that aviation fuel at the Zabul garrison had been sold, allegedly by the garrison commander. “These people,” said one resident, quoted by Tolonews, “have become accustomed to embezzlement”.28F²⁹

Jennifer Murtazashvili (Brookings) argues that ‘the longer the US was there, the worse these governance outcomes were’:

People lost complete faith in the central government. That's why you saw the Afghan army collapse like it did because people had nothing to fight for. Of course, they could fight against the Taliban, but their alternative was this corrupt government in Kabul who nobody felt represented their interests. People lost complete faith in the central government. And once the donor support left, once the U.S. was gone, all of this was really laid bare. So it became impossible to ask Afghans to fight for an illegitimate government.29F³⁰

6 The challenge of nation-building

The attempt to build a state through foreign aid in Afghanistan provides some salient lessons for global development.

Daron Acemoglu, professor of economics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, argues that the nation-building process the US and its allies pursued in Afghanistan was part of a ‘venerable tradition’ in political science which assumes that ‘if you can establish overwhelming military dominance over a territory and subdue all other sources of power, you can then impose your will’. At best this theory is only half right, he argues, but in Afghanistan ‘it was dead wrong’:

Of course, Afghanistan needed a functioning state. But the presumption that one could be imposed from above by foreign forces was misplaced. […] this approach makes no sense when your starting point is a deeply heterogeneous society organized around local customs and norms, where state institutions have long been absent or impaired.30F³¹

Others identify a lack of will and commitment on the part of the US to the construction effort. Landers and Aboneaaj point to a damaging neglect of the country’s political dynamics:

Statebuilding was a core feature of the US enterprise in Afghanistan. But at the heart of this mission lies a central paradox: using foreign assistance to establish core government institutions—such as judicial systems, security and police, and executive agencies—while purposefully ignoring the political dynamics undermining the very institutions it seeks to establish.31F³²

US analyst Michael O’Hanlon describes fluctuating levels of interest and resources invested in international reconstruction efforts in the decade post-2001, ‘when American and NATO forces made very modest efforts to help Afghanistan form a government as well as security forces’. This was nicknamed the ‘light footprint’ approach, of which he noted:

In this phase, Washington was preoccupied with Iraq, as were some NATO allies; no one in the alliance really prioritized Afghanistan, and the U.S. role there focused on counterterrorism, since Al Qaeda was still around in various pockets and places. Yes, we should have done more to build up the Afghan state during this golden window, when Taliban resistance was lighter. But much of the reason we chose not to try to do too much in Afghanistan then is because, as many are saying today, it was not a promising place to attempt nation-building, given all its problems. So the light footprint approach was a mistake, but a partly understandable one.32F³³

The surge in US forces between 2009 and 2011 and US attempts to rapidly strengthen Afghan security forces in response to the re-emergence of the Taliban also ‘did not work so well’, O’Hanlon submits: ‘Afghan government corruption in some ways got worse, as we poured resources into the impoverished country faster than it could absorb them’. By the end of 2014, US and NATO roles had scaled back, with ‘overall U.S. troop strength […] about 90 percent less than it had been during the surge’.33F³⁴ Economic development and state-building efforts continued, though with less presence in the field and generally lower expectations’. These changing strategies created a number of problems, according to O’Hanlon:

This yo-yo tendency in our Afghanistan strategy led to at least two more derivative problems. First, never really settling in for the kind of steady, long-term effort that was needed, we failed to build an adequate talent pool of Americans (in the military, State Department, and aid agencies) who could become specialists on Afghanistan and go back on a predictable basis two or three times, between stints at home. As a result, personal relationships had to be reforged every twelve months or so, over a twenty-year period. (Yes, many Americans did deploy repeatedly, but in an improvised and choppy way that did not sustain the long-term working relationships needed with key Afghans.) Second, we failed to focus on marginalizing the most corrupt actors in Afghanistan. At first, we often did not know who they were, or did not expect to be in Afghanistan long enough to weaken their influence. Then during the surge, we thought we needed some of them too much in order to achieve short-term battlefield gains, so we often tolerated them—worsening the government’s image among its people and therefore facilitating Taliban recruiting efforts.

But the key challenge was in trying to help rescue an Afghan society and political system that was badly broken, in the face of an insurgency that was supported by a neighboring country. It would have been hard to stabilize the situation regardless of strategy; this was a wicked problem. The implication is that this kind of intensive state-building and stabilization enterprise should only be undertaken in the most extreme of cases, because even when done well, there is no guarantee of success and a high likelihood of high cost. Perhaps there was no real choice in Afghanistan, after the 9/11 attacks, but the lesson needs to be kept in mind for the long-term future.34F³⁵

In 2013 Justin Sandefur (Center for Global Development) argued that with a ‘conceptually flawed’ counterinsurgency strategy, humanitarian and development aid ‘will never stop lunatics with guns from shooting at schoolgirls’. But this does not mean that aid in such situations is futile:

When America musters its civilian as well as its military resources, and allocates aid for the sake of saving lives rather than winning hearts and minds, it can be incredibly effective, even in the inauspicious conditions of rural Afghanistan. As the United States finds itself trying to rebuild failed states in war-torn societies — from Afghanistan to Mali to Somalia and so on — we have more effective tools at our disposal than aid critics suppose. Our infatuation with military responses to humanitarian crises cannot be blamed on a lack of alternatives.35F³⁶

7 Future prospects

As they withdrew their forces from Afghanistan this year both the US and its allies—including Australia—reiterated their commitment to continue supporting the Afghan people. In his announcement of the closure of Australia’s embassy in Kabul, Prime Minister Morrison confirmed that Australia ‘remains committed to supporting an Afghan-led peaceful resolution to the conflict in Afghanistan, and to helping preserve the gains of the past 20 years’. He also noted that Australia’s bilateral relationship with Afghanistan would continue, with development assistance to total $200 million over 2021–2024.

Aid groups are urging the international community to step up its aid efforts to address the unfolding humanitarian crisis. On 9 September 2021, the UNDP estimated that up to 97 per cent of the population may be at risk of sinking below the poverty line unless urgent action is taken, while on 22 September the WHO warned that the country’s health system, battling with the COVID-19 pandemic as well as lack of funds, was ‘on the brink of collapse’.

On 13 September donors pledged a total of US$1.3 billion in aid to Afghanistan, with many donors putting conditions on their funding, including maintaining the rights of women and girls, in the hope of holding the Taliban to account and encouraging the establishment of an inclusive government.

Afghanistan observers argue that threatening to withhold funding in the hope of improving governance has not worked in the past and is not likely to work now. Such a strategy fails to acknowledge the international community’s role in creating present-day Afghanistan and its dependence on external finance to provide the basics—including, critically, food—and that ‘playing politics’ with funding as a means of pressure would be a ‘cynical, superficial, and dangerous policy’.36F³⁷ Instead of freezing the country’s aid and assets, writes Adam Tooze (Foreign Policy), what Afghanistan needs is ‘an amply funded multilateral humanitarian effort to ensure life can continue as far as possible and millions of people are preserved from disaster’.37F³⁸

The international community is struggling to balance Afghanistan’s humanitarian needs without bestowing legitimacy on the Taliban regime. On 12 October an emergency meeting of G20 countries resolved to ‘tackle the humanitarian crisis in Afghanistan, even if it means having to coordinate efforts with the Taliban’:

There was unanimous agreement among the participants about the need to alleviate the crisis in Afghanistan, where banks are running out of money, civil servants have not been paid and food prices have soared, leaving millions at risk of severe hunger.38F³⁹

The European Commission has asked its member states to endorse the resumption of limited development work in Afghanistan, on the condition that it be carried out by NGOs and international organisations, not through the Taliban.

The US and its allies are also concerned with the shift in power relations that may see China and Russia—both of whom have offered support for reconstruction—filling the void left by their departure. On 20 October 2021 the Taliban gained the support of Russia, China, Pakistan, India, Iran, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan for the idea of a UN donor conference to help the country stave off economic collapse and a humanitarian catastrophe. China has already pledged A$42 million in humanitarian support for Afghanistan. Analysts caution, however, that China and Russia ‘must also confront the dangers that could emanate from Afghanistan at the regional level’.

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Notes

[←1]

.    UK House of Commons Library, Afghanistan: development, UK aid, and the future, Research Briefing, September 2021, p. 5.

[←2]

.    Senate Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade, Australia’s overseas development programs in Afghanistan, The Senate, Canberra, 16 May 2013, p. 53.

[←3]

.    Ibid.

[←4]

.    Inclusive, constant 2018 prices.

[←5]

.    UK House of Commons Library, Afghanistan: development, UK aid, and the future, op. cit., p. 11.

[←6]

.    The US Government’s Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR)—the office tasked with reviewing US reconstruction funding in Afghanistan—30 October 2021 Quarterly Report to Congress, p. 164. The total cost of Afghanistan reconstruction efforts cited in reports often does not distinguish between ODA and non-ODA-eligible expenditure. The OECD DAC defines Official Development Assistance (ODA) as aid ‘administered with the promotion of the economic development and welfare of developing countries as its main objective’, and excludes the provision of military equipment and services, anti-terrorism activities and most peacekeeping expenditures. The cost of using armed forces to deliver humanitarian aid is eligible as ODA, however. For the purposes of this report, aid generally refers to ODA eligible expenditure. SIGAR reported that the US$146 billion appropriated for Afghanistan relief and reconstruction since 2002 was used to ‘build the Afghan National Security Forces, promote good governance, conduct development assistance, and engage in counter-narcotics and anti-corruption efforts.

[←7]

.    UK House of Commons Library, Afghanistan: development, UK aid, and the future, op. cit., p. 25.

[←8]

.    Senate Standing Committee, Australia’s overseas development programs, op. cit., pp. 22–23.

[←9]

.    UK House of Commons Library, Afghanistan: development, UK aid, and the future, op. cit., p. 23.

[←10]

.    UK House of Commons Library, Afghanistan: development, UK aid, and the future, op. cit., pp. 5, 32.

[←11]

. John Allen and Vanda Felbab-Brown (Brookings Institution) also note: ‘… gains for women have been distributed highly unequally, with the increases far greater for women in urban areas. For many rural women, particularly in Pashtun areas but also among other rural minority ethnic groups, actual life has not changed much from the Taliban era, formal legal empowerment notwithstanding. They are still fully dependent on men in their families for permission to access health care, attend school, and work. Many Afghan men remain deeply conservative. Typically, families allow their girls to have a primary or secondary education—usually up to puberty—and then will proceed with arranged marriages. Even if a young woman is granted permission to attend a university by her male guardian, her father or future husband may not permit her to work after graduation. Without any prodding from the Taliban, most Afghan women in rural areas are fully covered with the burqa’.

[←12]

. Senate Standing Committee, Australia’s overseas development programs, op. cit., citing Stephen Howes and Jonathan Pryke’s (Development Policy Centre) submission to the inquiry, p. 226.

[←13]

.    Senate Standing Committee, Australia’s overseas development programs, op. cit., p. 26.

[←14]

.    Ibid., p. 28.

[←15]

.    J Howard (Prime Minister), Ministerial statement to Parliament on the Australian Defence Force commitment to Afghanistan, speech, 9 August 2006.

[←16]

.    Senate Standing Committee, Australia’s overseas development programs, op. cit., p. xv.

[←17]

8 .    In their 2013 Devpolicy Blog, ‘The effectiveness of Australian aid to Afghanistan: our thoughts on the Senate’s tough evaluation task’, Howes and Pryke argued that ‘It is widely accepted that most of the corruption involving aid in Afghanistan has occurred with aid distributed outside the government system. By contrast, the ARTF, which has been extensively and publicly reviewed (see here), seems to be an effective aid delivery mechanism. There are risks and downsides to the provision of budgetary support, but the experience in Afghanistan suggests that there are also strong benefits’.

[←18]

.    Senate Standing Committee, Australia’s overseas development programs, op. cit., pp. 79–80.

[←19]

. The Senate Standing Committee report cited Professor William Maley: ‘The risk is that areas in which ordinary Afghans have done their best to produce local security will be neglected by aid agencies, and that this will send the signal that the way in which to secure aid money is to generate local insecurity’ (p. 112). The report also cited AID/WATCH, one of a number of NGOs highly critical of the military’s approach, which argued that while militarised aid could advance short-term military goals, in the long term it ‘tended to intensify conflicts associated with the war in Afghanistan’ (p. 113). In his evidence to the inquiry, Brendan Sergeant (Department of Defence) noted that the ADF was aware of this tension and acknowledged that aid was used for tactical purposes, and tried to minimise the risk to non-military aid workers: ‘One of the difficulties in this conflict is that it is a civil war and that the enemy will exploit circumstances to try to persuade or coerce parts of the population to either not cooperate with the government or to support them. That is one of the unfortunate things that happen. In our approach to it we try to avoid or minimise that happening, but it is part of the nature of the conflict’ (p. 118).

[←20]

.    Senate Standing Committee, Australia’s overseas development programs, op. cit., p. xvi. Similar concerns have been voiced in regard to US aid, which routed an estimated 20 per cent of its humanitarian and development aid through the US military.

[←21]

.    SIGAR, What we need to learn: lessons from 20 years of Afghanistan reconstruction, August 2021, p. xi.

[←22]

.    Ibid., p. xi.

[←23]

.    Ibid., p. viii.

[←24]

9 .    W Byrd, ‘As U.S. troops leave Afghanistan, can aid help in pursuing peace?’, United States Institute of Peace, 7 July 2021.

[←25]

.    J Dobbin, ‘Afghanistan was lost long ago: defeat wasn’t inevitable, but early mistakes made success unlikely’, Foreign Affairs, online article, 30 August 2021.

[←26]

.    Official aid does not represent the full amount of funds dedicated to reconstruction efforts. VOA reported that the SIGAR ‘noted that the U.S. Congress has appropriated nearly $134 billion for Afghan reconstruction programs since the ouster of the Taliban in late 2001’.

[←27]

.    S Chayes, ‘Afghanistan’s corruption was made in America’, Foreign Affairs, online article, 3 September 2021.

[←28]

.    UK House of Commons Library, Afghanistan: development, UK aid, and the future, op. cit., p. 25.

[←29]

10 .    K Clark, ‘The Taleban’s rise to power: as the US prepared for peace, the Taleban prepared for war’, Afghanistan Analysts Network, 21 August 2021.

[←30]

. D Dollar and J Murtazashvili, ‘Why did state building efforts in Afghanistan fail?’ Dollar & Sense podcast, The Brookings Institution, 30 August 2021.

[←31]

.    D Acemoglu, ‘Why nation building failed in Afghanistan’, Project Syndicate, 20 August 2021.

[←32]

.    C Landers and R Aboneaaj, ‘Giving up the “statebuilding” ghost: lessons from Afghanistan for foreign assistance in fragile states’, Center for Global Development, 16 September 2021.

[←33]

.    ME O’Hanlon, ‘A preliminary verdict on Afghanistan strategy’, Brookings Institution, 5 October 2021.

[←34]

.    NATO provides troop numbers under its ‘Resolute Support Mission’ in International Security Assistance Force (ISAF): key facts and figures, and also provides an archive of updates.

[←35]

.    O’Hanlon, ‘A preliminary verdict’, op. cit.

[←36]

.      J Sandefur, ‘Here’s the best thing the United States has done in Afghanistan’, Center for Global Development, October 2013.

[←37]

.       A Tooze, ‘Don’t abandon Afghanistan’s economy too’, Foreign Policy, online article, 27 August 2021.

[←38]

.       Major donors, the World Bank and the IMF have frozen aid and assets, including the country’s US$9.4 billion foreign exchange reserves held by the US Federal Reserve.

[←39]

.       Australian Broadcasting Commission/AFP-Reuters, ‘G20 pledges help for Afghan humanitarian crisis at special summit’, 13 October 2021.