Hope comes with big price tag in Afghanistan

Mohammad Ehsan Zia, minister of rural rehabilitation and development, inspects the construction of a school in Uruzgan Province with members of the local development assembly. (Photos by MRRD/NABDP)

Lael H. Adams, a graduate student at Boston University studying international relations and journalism, is working this summer in Kabul, Afghanistan.

By Lael Adams

KABUL, Afghanistan -- A couple of weeks ago, a tall, old man wearing a dust-colored turban and a perehan tunban, the traditional Afghan dress for men, walked into the office at the Afghan government’s Ministry of Rural Rehabilitation and Development, or MRRD, in Kabul, where I am working as a donor relations intern for the summer. His stark white beard was neatly trimmed on his round face and contrasted vibrantly with his watery brown eyes and leathery reddish skin.

"Sister," he said to me in Farsi. "Do you speak Pashto or Farsi?" Despite my blonde hair and blue eyes, and perhaps because of the shalwar kameez, traditional Afghan dress for women, I was wearing, it was not the first time in the past two months that I'd been mistaken for an Afghan. I understood him well enough to respond, “English.”

The old man explained in broken English that he had come in search of work from a village in Uruzgan, a central province about 200 miles west of Kabul that has only recently become accessible to the Ministry because of security problems. He said there are no jobs in Uruzgan.

“Insha’ Allah, things will soon be better,” I said to the old man, using the Arabic term for “if God wills it.’’

“Yes, I like this word – Insha’ Allah,” he said. “It is a good word.”

About 80 percent of Afghanistan’s population lives in the rural areas of the country, where infrastructure never truly existed before 2002. The National Area-Based Development Program, or NABDP, one of the six branches of the Ministry and the one in which I work, has implemented about 1,750 development projects in rural areas of all 34 provinces, in partnership with the United Nations Development Program and with funding from the international community. Since its inception in 2002, NABDP has directly benefited more than 1.5 million families with the construction of schools, wells, irrigation systems, roads, economic regeneration programs, and other infrastructure projects.

Despite this progress, the status of economic and infrastructure development in Afghanistan is, as the old man said, altogether not good. Yet the status of development in Afghanistan is neither hopeless nor degenerative, as dominating Western media headlines would have us believe. Judging from my experience working with the Afghan government on development, I have found it to be a refreshingly hopeful situation.

Mohammad Ehsan Zia and US Ambassador Karl W. Eikenberry attend the inauguration of a bridge project in Uruzgan Province.

The MRRD has a reputation for being one the most effective and efficient ministries in the Afghan government. According to an independent evaluation report from the UK’s York University, MRRD shows a very low prevalence of corruption compared with other development aid organizations in Afghanistan. Most importantly, it is an Afghan institution, thus defying international stereotypes of rampant government corruption and ineffectiveness.

The minister, Mohammad Ehsan Zia, is a soft-spoken man with a unique frankness for a politician and a degree in postwar recovery studies from York University. He is a far cry from one of the many former warlords whom President Hamid Karzai appeased with a Cabinet position. Sitting in his office, Zia posed a timely question whose outcome hinges on several factors related to development in Afghanistan, including the cooperation of the international community, the questionable fate of a declared failed state, and the patience of a war-weary people: “How can we promote hope in our population, who live in a desperate situation, and allow them to believe they have a government which is working if this government is not funded?”

The ministry’s development approach highlights the fundamental relationship between development, security, and local governance, going right to the source of hope. The Ministry has set up mixed-gender local assemblies in every district who prioritize and implement projects in their area by employing locals to do most of the labor.

But acquiring adequate funding has been the major obstacle for the Ministry in reaching its goals. On a recent trip to the United States and Europe to address politicians, Zia said his main message was for the international community to support the Afghan government.

“What I have found when traveling to the villages is that the villagers never attribute the good works of an NGO or foreign organization to the government of Afghanistan,” said Zia. “They don’t thank President Karzai. I never heard any Afghan criticizing NGOs for not providing drinking water, but they do criticize the government of Afghanistan. The government is taking all of the criticism, but very little of the funding.”

To overemphasize what has not been done, what has failed, or what obstacles continue to cripple the country is the nature of the media and the international community, but does not reflect the nature of the Afghanistan I have come to know through working for the ministry.

Unfortunately, the hopefulness that Zia is trying to foster among Afghans through a strengthened governmental development initiative has a big price tag and an international community reluctant to carry the costs.

Insha’ Allah, things will soon be better.

To learn how you can blog for Passport, contact Lydia Rebac at lrebac@globe.com