Kabul – Afghanistan may not be lost, yet, but we are skirting

precariously close. The international community is blatantly out of touch with realities on the ground, while ordinary Afghans increasingly regard NATO troops as the new occupiers, not unlike the Soviets of the 1980s. For many, Afghanistan is no longer theirs, but a land run by outsiders.

The US-led engagement following the collapse of the Talib regime in

late 2001 was billed to Afghans as a commitment to help Afghanistan

achieve stability and recovery.

Today, however, a mixed and often futile agenda of military counter insurgency and narcotics operations is absorbing the bulk of western investment. At the same time, holed up in their heavily fortified compounds, the US and other international missions are finding themselves increasingly cutoff from both the country and its people.

Incidents such as the Coalition bombing in early September in Kunduz

with its high civilian casualties have only deepened Afghan

resentment. Civilians complain bitterly about the foreign troops,

including mercenaries, who halt traffic at the end of a gun, fire on

vehicles, or enter homes and clinics without apology.

As one Afghan engineer, who originally supported the Coalition, told

me: “They have no manners and treat us like dogs. It is time for them

to go.”

The growing militarization of operations in Afghanistan mean that even

long-standing humanitarian activities have become suspect in the eyes

of Afghans. With nearly three-quarters of the country now considered

“no go” zones” by the United Nations, recent years have witnessed a

rise in insurgent attacks against aid workers.

The internationals have developed a siege mentality, partly encouraged by the private security companies benefiting from a lucrative business that now accounts for up to one quarter of operational budgets. Most American, British and other international mission staff are not allowed out of their heavily barricaded compounds, often for months on end. Only the chosen few can leave, and then usually only accompanied by armed guards, which hardly encourages interaction with local Afghans.

Such isolation is expected to grow worse. The Americans are seeking to promote a new ‘fusion' with joint military-civilian operations as

their way of persuading Afghans that they are here for their own good.

For the humanitarians, this will only undermine their integrity and

make it even more hazardous to work. They also fear that European

donors will fall in line with Washington by making their funding

contingent on collaborating with the military.

During a recent return visit to Afghanistan, I probed scores of

Afghans, international aid workers and mission representatives with

longtime experience in the country over how to put the recovery

process back on track. All stressed the deepening isolation of the

international community as the main reason for the crumbling recovery effort.

Some described the western effort as “completely out of control” with

funds poorly spent and little effective coordination. As one seasoned

British NGO coordinator maintained, the military refuse to recognize

how much they are hated, no matter how they dress it up, while the way aid is dispersed is "disastrous."

“There're a lot of people in complete denial about what is being achieved,” he said.

International representatives, including senior NATO officers, admit

that such bunkering severely compromises their ability to stay

informed. As one senior adviser with US special envoy Richard

Holbrooke admitted, remaining in touch with what's happening on the

outside of the sprawling US embassy compound in Kabul is their

“biggest problem.”

Experienced players warn that the corrosive lack of knowledge about

Afghanistan among Western ‘experts' is another crippling factor. There is a lot of comment being made by people who have no idea what they are talking about, and yet are the ones in charge of shaping Western policy in Afghanistan, they maintain.

For Anders Fange, co-founder of the Swedish Committee for Afghanistan which first began working clandestinely in Afghanistan during the early 1980s, the West still has no clear strategy: “No one can really explain what they're doing or what their real objective is for being here,” he said.

Although considerable strides have been made in health and education, uncontrolled corruption threatens even these gains. American and other foreign companies are regularly granted major contracts despite vaulting overheads and high salaries with as little as five percent reaching Afghanistan itself. Hundreds of millions of dollars vanish yearly into the pockets of corrupt Afghan officials.

Transparency

International now ranks Afghanistan as the fifth most corrupt country

in the world, just behind Haiti.

Many Afghans bitterly wonder where the over 20 billion dollars of aid

pledges have gone. They criticize the internationals for “filling the

bellies” of the privileged elites, including the Karzai regime.

“International recovery has become one big pretend game,” said Aga

Khan Foundation architect, Jolyon Leslie, who has been working here

for 20 years. Mohammed Eshaq, a former Northern Alliance information director now managing an IT company in Kabul, agrees. “Many outsiders are simply ticking off the boxes for the sake of appearance. It doesn't matter what works or not,” he said.

Since the intervention in October, 2001, western donors have largely

failed to heed recommendations for carefully implemented recovery

initiatives, notably in rural areas where nearly 80 percent of the

population lives. They also ignored warnings not to throw money at

Kabul, turning it into another Dubai that ensures the comfort of the

international community, but offers little to the rest of the country.

Aid workers argue that the Taliban and other insurgents, whose support is spreading within the aid agencies and government ministries, need to be involved. They point out that working in communities with known rebel elements has not prevented them from promoting girl's education or agricultural initiatives for women.

Direct engagement with local populations is precisely what the most

experienced NGOs have been doing for years. “Working in the villages

takes longer and is far more difficult than Kabul, but it's the only

way to make changes. It's also one's best security,” said coordinator

Pascal Arthaud of Madera, a French agricultural NGO.

Eight years on, there needs to be far more informed new thinking about what to do about Afghanistan based on on-the-ground realities. The current message is that overcoming the insurgency by military-dominated means has become far more important than rebuilding the country. Yet nothing has ever been achieved in Afghanistan by force. NATO's proposed new initiatives are too late. The hatred for the occupiers already exists.

Many Afghans, including senior government officials, simply have no confidence in the staying power of the international community. For recovery to succeed, the West needs to make its longterm commitment clear and unequivocal. Equally crucial, it needs to re-establish contact with ordinary Afghans, particularly those who consider the insurgents the better option.

(Edward Girardet is a American writer, journalist and former foreign
correspondent for The Christian Science Monitor, The NewsHour and
other media who has been covering Afghanistan for 30 years. Author of Afghanistan:The Soviet War (St Martins Press, 1985) and The Essential Field Guide to Afghanistan (Crosslines, 2006), he recently returned on a grant from the San Francisco-based Center for Investigative Reporting to complete research for another book on Afghanistan).

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