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AFGHANISTAN: Disappointed With Karzai, NATO

Anand Gopal

KABUL, Mar 28 2008 (IPS) - The Shahr-e-now park in the centre of Kabul has seen better days. "It used to be really beautiful," Kabul resident Torialay says, "back during the early-90s. But after the Mujahiddin war (a civil war between warlords and commanders in the mid-90s that destroyed much of the city) it has never been restored."

"Look at this place," he says, waving his hand over a dusty lot filled with begging children and unemployed men. "The government and the Americans haven&#39t done anything for us. And they haven&#39t built roads or provided jobs. They&#39ve had six years to do it, but they haven&#39t."

A growing number of Afghans are expressing dissatisfaction with the Karzai government and foreign presence in their country. With widespread corruption in government circles and a slow pace of reconstruction, support for ruling and foreign institutions are at an all-time low, experts say.

A recent report by the Senlis Council, an international think tank, says that "Kabul and the international community’s consistent promises of aid are simply not materialising in vast swathes of the country: in an already uncertain and tense environment, this sort of breach of trust breeds anger and resentment. Many Afghans are seeing no improvements in living conditions, and often they are seeing things grow worse."

An ABC news poll reports that the U.S.&#39 approval rating in the country has dipped to 42 percent in 2007, down from 68 percent just two years ago.

"The foreigners do not help us," Kabul resident Zafar Nafisi, sitting on a curb in the park next to a shoe-shine boy, says. "They have spent billions of dollars in this country, but where has all the money gone? Why am I still sitting here in the park without a job?"

A new report by an umbrella group for non-governmental agencies operating in Afghanistan confirms this assessment. Of the 25 billion US dollars pledged for reconstruction, "just 15 billion dollars in aid has so far been spent," the Agency Coordinating Body for Afghan Relief (ACBAR) says, "of which it is estimated a staggering 40 percent has returned to donor countries in corporate profits and salaries."

"The reconstruction of Afghanistan requires a sustained and substantial commitment of aid – but donors have failed to meet their aid pledges to Afghanistan. Too much aid from rich countries is wasted, ineffective or uncoordinated," the report goes on to say.

The United States has appropriated 127 billion dollars for military efforts in Afghanistan since 2001 and is currently spending nearly 100 million dollars a day and close to 36 billion dollars a year, according to aid agency reports. Yet the volume of all non-military international aid amounts to only 7 million dollars a day, ACBAR says. The agency reports that "in the two years following international intervention, Afghanistan received 57 dollars per capita, whilst Bosnia and East Timor received 679 dollars and 233 dollars per capita respectively."

Analysts also maintain that burgeoning insecurity adds to the general dissatisfaction with foreign forces. UN Secretary General Ban Ki Moon reported recently that violence in the country went "up sharply" in 2007. Ban said there were over 8,000 conflict-related deaths and an average of 586 incidents per month, close to a 40 percent jump from 2006.

Large sections of the southern and eastern parts of the country are now inaccessible to aid workers, and criminal gangs are flourishing in the security-poor environment.

In the southern and eastern regions – where fighting between coalition forces and the Taliban is particularly intense – observers say the coalition troops&#39 heavy-handed techniques are alienating many and fueling a Taliban resurgence. "The indiscriminate air strikes and the searching of innocent civilians&#39 homes – if this continues it will make many people unhappy," government official Sadeq Mudaber says. A Senlis Council poll conducted last year found that 27 percent of villagers in rural southern Afghanistan openly professed support for the Taliban, up from just 2 percent in 2005.

For many Afghans, the dissatisfaction extends to the government. "I used to work for the government," Torialay says. "But I was laid off. Now I can&#39t get a job – if you want to get a government job you have to bribe someone, or you have to know someone."

Haroun Mir, deputy director of the Afghanistan Centre for Research and Policy Studies, says that corruption is endemic to all levels of government. At the top, he says, exist powerful figures who act as if they are above the law and feed a culture of impunity. At the bottom, poorly trained, compensated and motivated government employees incorporate bribery and other forms of corruption into their daily routine.

"Our judiciary system is so corrupt that there hasn&#39t been a single person indicted for corruption," Mir says.

"I have to admit that the degree of administrative corruption in Afghanistan is high. I believe that the ongoing and widespread administrative corruption in the corridors of government is giving the Taliban a new lease on life," Afghan Vice President Abdul Karim Khalili recently told reporters.