Some of you may recall my posts from Kabul last month while I was on a fact-finding trip for Jobs for Afghans. A sad postscript to the story is that our host organization, Development and Humanitarian Services of Afghanistan (DHSA,) this month lost 3 Afghan aid workers to a roadside bomb in the north of the country. The following is a condensed version of the email we sent out on our findings from this trip, to our hosts and other participants. If you are of a mind to, please go to your congressman's and 2 senators' email form HERE and simply cut-and paste this entire post with a note to "please read and act." It is our evaluation that Afghanistan can be stabilized and preparations made for US troops to begin withdrawing within one year. Thank you.
To All Who Met With Us;
Thank you again for engaging with us last month during the presentation and fact-finding mission to Kabul of Jobs for Afghans. We are pleased to release our report and our findings as guests of our kind hosts at Development and Humanitarian Services of Afghanistan.
Among our findings:
-- In our interviews with the unemployed in Kabul, at locations where men congregate to wait (mostly in vain) for day labor, we found a strong note of desperation in their day-to-day existence. Unemployment is 40%. Anger was directed at both the government and non-governmental organization (NGOs,) and there was a strong awareness that large amounts of money were flowing through the country to the benefit of a few, mostly foreign, contractors, but not to the great majority of Afghans.
-- After discussing the strengths and potential weaknesses of cash for work programs with many different players, we conclude that only such an initiative can bring short-term stability and pave the road for long term growth and development. Without a foundation of social stability, there is no "breathing room" for the development of enterprise which can out-pace growing dissatisfaction.
-- In a recent report by Afghanistan’s Independent Department of Local Governance (IDLG), district governors in all 34 provinces unanimously declared that "unemployment is the mother of all problems."
As always our greatest thanks and gratitude go to our wonderful hosts at DHSA, who recently lost 3 of the DHSA family to violence in the north. This report, and all which may come of it, is dedicated to those three of the best of Afghanistan, whose work for peace never ends.
Warmly,
Ralph Lopez and Najim Dost
Jobs for Afghans
http://jobsforafghans.org
FULL REPORTS:
http://jobsforafghans.org/...
http://jobsforafghans.org/...
Excerpts from Reports
In 2008 a consortium of highly-respected NGOs working in Afghanistan released a report entitled "The ACBAR Report on Aid Effectiveness in Afghanistan" concluding unequivocally that a large part of non-military foreign aid to Afghanistan had been wasted.
The Taliban insurgency, once almost defeated after the US-led invasion in 2001, is on the rise. Dissatisfied with the failed promises of alternative livelihoods, opium producers are turning back to growing more opium than wheat or other crops. In UN poverty indexes Afghanistan ranks 174th out of 178 countries, actually dropping one place since the overthrow of the Taliban. A great majority of the population still lacks access to basic necessities of life such as food, shelter, and even minimal emergency health care.
We believe all this can be reversed by shifting our focus in the short run to unemployment, also known as "the mother of all problems" in Afghanistan, with appropriate plans for long run growth. With greater than 40% of the workforce unable to find jobs, social unrest is unavoidable. We are, therefore, proposing a bold and ambitious economic plan that would give low-skilled fighting-age men employment opportunities for $7 a day through a mega-scale cash-for-work program throughout the country. After discussing the strengths and potential weaknesses of such programs with many different players involved in the reconstruction, we conclude that it is only such an initiative which will bring short-term stability and pave the road for initiatives aimed at achieving long term growth and development.
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It is no surprise that the Taliban, although extremely unpopular with the Afghan people and once almost defeated after the US-led invasion in 2001, are re-emerging and gaining more support. Their comeback has a lot to do with the unfulfilled promises of the international community and their failed attempts to bring about stability and visible changes in the lives of ordinary Afghans. The World Bank points out that at least 35% of Afghans do not meet the daily minimum caloric intake requirement which is the threshold for avoiding malnutrition.
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History has no shortage of examples backing the presumption that programs which infuse cash and capital into a devastated economy work in the long run, most notable of which is the Marshall Plan. Foreign assistance consisted mostly of supplies, food, and wages administered by the Economic Cooperation Administration (ECA,) signed into law by President Truman in 1948. The Marshall Plan was a phenomenal success, and laid the groundwork for dynamic economic growth in Europe and a stable economic partnership with the U.S. Previously hostile Germany became a staunch political ally.
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Secretary of State George Marshall remarked that "the patient is sinking while the doctors deliberate." We believe we have taken long enough deliberating and it is time to act before the tides reverse, and we lose our strongest allies in Afghanistan to the Taliban, i.e. ordinary Afghan people.
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Methods of Payment to Work Crews
It should be noted that in Afghanistan the vast majority of households do
not have enough money to have a bank account and manage their affairs on a cash basis or barter basis. In the cash for work site we visited run by CARE International, workers were paid in cash at the end of each week, at the base labor rate of $4 per day, and were issued sturdy plastic time cards, kept on the worker’s person in a thick-gauge plastic pouch which was waterproof and mud-proof. Holes were punched to represent receipt of a week’s pay.
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The implementation of such a large scale program requires immense
administrative, logistical and oversight capabilities, capable of implementing thousands of small an medium-sized projects, as well as a smaller number of large ones. We, however, believe we do not need to reinvent the wheel and can rely on existing structures and institutions to carry out such programs. The Ministry of Rural Rehabilitation and Development’s (MRRD) flagship National Solidarity Program (NSP) is one such apparatus that we believe is fully capable of implementing such programs. For more details, please visit their website at http://www.mrrd.gov.af/... or http://www.nspafghanistan.org/...
This is an ambitious and costly agenda, requiring strong donor commitment. However, as measured against the cost of prolonged war, which escalates as a result of neglect of underlying causes, the yearly budget would be well under 10% of US military expenditure in the country, per year. With the U.S. economy so badly overstretched, any possibility of an ambitious domestic agenda will be drained by prolonged expenditures of $40 billion per year on this war, when one-tenth of that would stabilize Afghanistan
FULL REPORTS:
http://jobsforafghans.org/...
http://jobsforafghans.org/...
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Unemployed men waiting for day labor work in Kabul
Cash-for-work project in Kabul run by CARE International
Starvation in Kandahar
The diarist in Kabul