The Unsustainability of Afghanistan

Michael Yon, an independent journalist and author, has written a great article about Afghanistan and the work that one Provincial Reconstruction Team is doing there.

Here is the overall feeling of the article:

On one hand, we have a fraction of the troops we need, but on the other, increasing troop levels increases hostility toward us. Secretary Gates has made it clear to me that his biggest concern is that we will lose the goodwill of the people and they will turn against us. This happens to be my own biggest concern. The agony is in knowing we need more medicine and the medicine can be highly toxic here.

Yon also makes an interesting observation about the “dependency” that foreign aid can induce.  He gives two examples of such instances:

Unfortunately, these kids had already been taught the benefits of begging and this analogy extends directly to their parents. In Afghanistan, like Iraq, when we invest resources into installing a dieselgenerator for a neighborhood, the people will complain that we don’t supply the fuel. When the Indians paid for local broadcasting equipment in Chaghcharan, the station manager complained that the Indians didn’t make a new office, and there is often a tone that we need something or “give us or we will misbehave.”

While I do not have similiar experiences to Yon’s, the international development literature is full of practitioners worrying about just such a situation.  The solution is difficult: on the one hand, not providing the diesel might result in the locals not using the very expensive diesel system.  On the other hand, providing the diesel simply encourages the foreign aid dependence and kills any long term sustainability to the project.  Once international development organizations cease to provide the diesel, who will step in?

The same concern is echoed with regards to the health facilities in Afghanistan.  Yon speaks at length with a doctor in the Ghor Province, who is upset that the national government is mandating “free” health care when the existing system can barely handle those able to pay.  As Yon writes:

Dr. Yaqubi wants to show people that health care is not free, but he says that the parliament in Kabul thinks it should be free to all. The Afghan government can’t even drill a well for this provincial hospital, and all their machines and supplies were probably donated, yet they want “free” health care. The beggars of Kabul who refuse to drill a well for the Ghor Provincial Hospital want free health care for all!

I told Dr. Yaqubi that the same argument is raging in America, and I asked the Lithuanian doctor sitting beside me if this is an issue in Lithuania. She confirmed that it is. Dr. Yaqubi said that if treatment were completely free, the hospital would be overwhelmed. With about 750,000 people in Ghor Province, they’ve got 85 dirty beds here, and two smaller clinics elsewhere. Free health care? How about steady electricity to run the X-ray machine?

The comparison to the U.S. debate is a bit of a stretch, but the story serves as a good example of the sustainability problems international development organizations, and the Afghani government, face.  The national government is unwilling (unable?) to provide for the basic needs of the hospital but wants to mandate “free” health care without a source of funding.  While international development organizations maintain a presence, they can subsidize the bad policy and mute the negative impacts.  Once their term ends, however, what will the Afghani government do when faced with a dilapidated health care system that slowly deteriorates every year due to the inability of the hospitals to either, a) receive electricity, water or medicine and materials or b) cannot afford to stay open due to lack of revenue?

Iraq and Afghanistan

I don’t know how many of our readers follow the events in Afghanistan and Iraq, but here is a great article about the developments (and potential problems forces still face) in both these countries. The stories linked within the article are also great briefings on the individual situations of Afghanistan and Iraq. I highly recommend reading all three articles

As it’s finals season, I don’t have the time to give a thorough analysis of the piece. I disagree with a few of their conclusions and recommendations, but the facts they present alone are worth spending the time working through the articles.

Enjoy.

Democracy Imposed?

The Washington Post today included an article today by Sankar Vedantam on a new paper written by Professors Andrew Enterline and J. Michael Greig from the University of North Texas. The actual paper is available here. I have not actually finished reading the whole paper, but the article states that Enterline and Greig argue that democracy imposed by an outside force has a very poor track record. The paper uses a case set of 41 instances of democratization over the past 200-years. In the graph presented in the article (shown), it shows that Enterline and Greig make a distinction between “strong democracies” and “weak democracies.” The Post article does not indicate how strong democracies differ from the weak ones. Apparently, some imposed democracies can be strong democracies, at least according to Shankar Vedantam’s depiction of the paper and the graph. Germany and Japan are given as examples of strong democracies, even though they are imposed.

Enterline and Greig argue that after twenty-five years, strong democracies are likely to last. Meanwhile, the survival rate of weak-democracies deteriorates quickly. By the authors’ measurements, seventy-five percent of weak democracies fail in the first thirty years and around ninety percent fail in the first sixty years.

According to Vedantam, Enterline and Greig identify four criteria that lead to successful imposition of democracy: (1) large occupation forces, (2) clear message of sustained, long-term occupation to back new state, (3) ethnically homogenous society, and (4) democratic neighbors.

If Enterline and Greig are correct in their analysis, things do not look well for Iraq and Afghanistan. I am still interested to learn how they define strong and weak democracies. There seems to be a missing link between Vedantam’s presentation of the paper’s argument and the graph. What makes a strong or weak imposed democracy? Is it an institutional explanation? Just the four criteria cited above? Is it the commitment of leaders and elites to a new democratic order? I’ll provide an update as I finish the paper, but I recommend everyone check out the article on their own.