Select Committee on International Development Minutes of Evidence


Memorandum submitted by CARE International UK

What peace dividend?

  1.  CARE has been in Afghanistan since 1961[1]. CARE is currently operational in seven provinces of eastern Afghanistan, and works through local partners in south/eastern and western Afghanistan. We have 650 staff, of whom 640 are Afghan. Our programme in Afghanistan of some £15 million[2] covers education, water, shelter, rural rehabilitation and emergency relief.

  2.  Over the years we have watched one conflict follow another, one humanitarian crisis lead to the next. When the war started last October, Afghans had already lived through three years of drought and 23 years of war. Only a massive relief operation last winter averted a humanitarian catastrophe.

  3.  Afghanistan is currently at a crossroads. It is far from certain that Afghanistan will continue to move towards peace and development. We believe that the international community has a unique opportunity, and responsibility, to help Afghanistan break out of its recurrent cycles of poverty and instability.

  4.  Last January in Tokyo, the international community pledged US$5.25 billion in support to Afghanistan. Expecting an influx of up to 800,000 returnees in 2002, almost $1.8 billion of that was to be spent this year. While more than twice the predicted number of people have returned to their homes, significantly less than half of this year's pledges have been disbursed, according to data from the Afghanistan government.

  5.  The World Bank determined in January 2002, that, as a "base case", Afghanistan would require $10.2 billion over five years—about twice that actually pledged in Tokyo. Most experts concede that it will take considerably more than that. In recent post-conflict settings in four other countries, donors spent an average of $250 per person per year in aid. In Afghanistan, they have pledged $75 per person for 2002, and spent a good deal less.

  6.  Despite this, a lot has been achieved this year. More than 1.4 million refugees and 200,000 IDPs have returned home; more than three million children are back to school, almost a third of whom are girls; nearly six million children have been vaccinated for polio, and more than 30,000,000 square metres of land have been returned to communities for productive use by mine action teams.

The emergency is not over

  7.  The vast majority of disbursed funds have gone towards meeting short-term emergency needs. Even so, needs remain significant. Because insufficient funding is being released, Afghans are being forced to choose between meeting short-term needs and beginning long-term reconstruction. With reconstruction all but stalled and economic hardship on the rise, many of the summer's returnees may become the winter's refugees.

  8.  Rural communities, already devastated by drought and conflict, will not be able to absorb the large numbers of people who have returned. In the Shomali valley, for example, at current funding levels only 40 per cent of the shelter needed by returning refugees and internally displaced people will have been completed before winter.

  9.  The situation is also grave in the cities. Kabul is a particular case in point. It has absorbed a disproportionately high percentage of returning refugees. Basic services and facilities such as water, sanitation and shelter that were devastated in the factional fighting of the early 1990s have seen scant investment to repair the damage since that time. The influx of returnees has exacerbated the already desperate shelter conditions for the most vulnerable families in the city. The worst-off families, with significant numbers headed by widows, have had to abandon the homes they have occupied and are now living in open spaces or public buildings. With winter approaching it is vital to provide emergency assistance to these groups, in the form of basic support for providing warm, dry rooms in homes and public buildings.

  10.  Without substantial investment in strengthening local employment capacity, providing social services and rebuilding basic infrastructure, this problem will be compounded in future years. Over four million Afghan refugees are still living in Pakistan and Iran or remain internally displaced within Afghanistan because of drought and conflict. In the short term, emergency priorities are to help Afghans survive the coming winter with adequate food, water, shelter and health care.

Reconstruction is about institutions as well as buildings

  11.  The country currently faces both an ongoing emergency and a massive reconstruction challenge. The work of rebuilding roads, schools, hospitals and irrigations systems should not have to be put on hold. Using labour-intensive methods, this reconstruction effort can help provide jobs and boost the economy.

  12.  The Afghan government has developed a National Development Framework which clearly lays out their priorities. Those priorities include road reconstruction and other large-scale infrastructure projects to create employment and stimulate the economy, reviving agricultural production, replenishing livestock, and equipping Afghans with the means to support themselves. They include providing education and basic health care for every Afghan child.

  13.  To do all these things, the government wants to strengthen its own capacity to deliver those services to its people. For the current year, the government's operating budget is $460 million, of which $377 million has been requested from international donors. At present, there is a 50 per cent[3] shortfall in this budget and disbursements to the Afghan Reconstruction Trust Fund remain at less than 10 per cent of requested levels.

  14.  These funds are essential to pay civil servants, restore critical public services, and lay the foundations for effective governance. At least for the next two to three years, this assistance from the international community should overwhelmingly be in the form of grants, not loans, to avoid saddling Afghanistan with new debt obligations.

  15.  More than 500 international staff continue to run the UN's humanitarian and reconstruction programmes. In reality, the Afghan authorities have minimal strategic control over the disbursement of aid funds for reconstruction. It is probably the case that Afghanistan's institutions cannot currently administer the volume of aid needed in an effective and transparent manner, but this capacity can be built. Donors must invest in the Afghan authorities in a way that will allow them assume strategic leadership for the country's reconstruction.

Widespread security is a priority

  16.  Over the past six months, security has continued to deteriorate, not only in rural areas under the control of regional warlords, but even in Kabul, where the international peacekeeping force (ISAF) is present. Without security, international funding support will remain stalled, reconstruction will be severely hampered, and the country may return to factional conflict.

  17.  In the South and South East, where CARE does most of its work, a low level conflict between the international coalition and the remnants of Al Qaida and the Taliban has compromised both relief efforts and the reconstruction agenda. In other parts of the country, crime, banditry and factional tensions between regional commanders have threatened the safety of local populations and hampered relief and reconstruction work.

  18.  Most experts agree that the 4,500 member ISAF force is a wholly inadequate response to the security situation in Afghanistan. The international community are supporting the training and equipping a national army and police force over a period of years. Yet, at projected rates of investment and training, at the end of the two-year transition the Afghan security force will have 3,000 trained Afghan soldiers. It is inconceivable that such a small force will be able to provide adequate protection for more than 24 million people living in a mountainous country of over 640,000 square kilometres.

  19.  With Afghanistan's legacy of violent factional conflict, and many regional military power brokers still in place, the potential for further deterioration in security remains high. More than half a million Afghans carry arms, and there are few other employment opportunities outside of militia work.

  20.  A committed approach to the long-term security of Afghanistan is likely to require large scale disarmament, the expansion of international peacekeeping forces and massive generation of employment opportunities.

CONCLUSIONS

  21.  The rhetoric from the international community has been good. We have promised a Marshall Plan for Afghanistan and said that we would not abandon the Afghan people as we did after the Soviet withdrawal. However there are worrying signs that the international community wants to move on, making the fulfillment of future pledges to Afghanistan even less likely.

  22.  The UK Government has been one of only six donors to make commitments over the next five years. We urge the Government to use the position of influence within the international community that this brings to press for the following:

    (a)  firm commitments from all major donors to pledge and deliver at least US$10 billion over the next five years for reconstruction in Afghanistan;

    (b)  funds for both emergency work and reconstruction to be made available with urgency so that Afghans are not forced to choose between the two;

    (c)  a clear plan for ensuring adequate security in Afghanistan to be articulated, agreed and provided with the necessary financial support.

CARE International UK

October 2002


1   With a suspension of activities from 1980-89 due to insecurity. Back

2   Of which approx. £250,000 is from DFID. Back

3   Afghanistan government, remarks to G8 Working Group on Afghanistan Security, 9 July 2002. Back


 
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