If the Obama administration and the international community really wanted to fix Afghanistan, they wouldn't be preparing to pour tens of thousands of new combat troops into the country, spending billions of dollars and hundreds or thousands of lives in the process.
Instead they would be patiently supporting the Afghan government's National Solidarity Program and others modeled on it and helping Afghans get back on their feet to rebuild and protect their own country in their own way:
Small grants given directly to villagers have brought about modest but important changes in this corner of Afghanistan, offering a model in a country where official corruption and a Taliban insurgency have frustrated many large-scale development efforts.
Since arriving in Afghanistan in 2001, the United States and its Western allies have spent billions of dollars on development projects, but to less effect and popular support than many had hoped for.
Much of that money was funneled through the central government, which has been increasingly criticized as incompetent and corrupt. Even more has gone to private contractors hired by the United States who siphon off almost half of every dollar to pay the salaries of expatriate workers and other overhead costs.
Not so here in Jurm, a valley in the windswept mountainous province of Badakhshan, in the northeast. People here have taken charge for themselves — using village councils and direct grants as part of an initiative called the National Solidarity Program, introduced by an Afghan ministry in 2003.
Before then, this valley had no electricity or clean water, its main crop was poppy and nearly one in 10 women died in childbirth, one of the highest maternal mortality rates in the world.
Today, many people have water taps, fields grow wheat and it is no longer considered shameful for a woman to go to a doctor.
In the midst of the violence and destruction and uncertainty, it's been a uniquely successful program. Local councils made up of people in the villages decide on what projects they want to build for themselves, apply for the funds, and manage and work on the projects themselves. Full transparency at the village level, including records of funds used to date are posted in the villages for all to see, preventing theft and corruption. As one farmer said, "You don’t steal from yourself."
The Taliban give NSP projects a wide berth, because they've discovered that destroying a school or hydro project built that way is the surest way to raise local fury against themselves.
General McChrystal and the militarized US foreign policy community think the way to ensure security in Afghanistan is to put 100,000 foreign troops into the country and press 200,000-plus Afghans into military service. Afghans themselves beg to disagree:
Poverty and unemployment are overwhelmingly seen as the main reasons behind conflict in Afghanistan, according to a survey in that country.
British aid agency Oxfam - which questioned 704 Afghans - said seven out of 10 respondents blamed these factors...
Oxfam said the survey showed that the country needed more than military solutions.
One in five said they had been tortured and one in 10 claimed to have been imprisoned at least once since 1979, when Soviet forces invaded...
• one in six Afghans are currently considering leaving the country
• three-quarters of Afghans have been forced to leave their homes since 1979
• one in 10 Afghans have been imprisoned at least once ...
One respondent in Nangarhar, whose name was concealed in order to protect his identity, described the impact of the conflict on his fellow Afghans.
"What do you think the effect that two million Afghans martyred, 70% of Afghanistan destroyed and our economy eliminated has had on us?" he asked.
"Half our people have been driven mad. A man who is 30 or 40 years old looks like he is 70. We always live in fear. We are not secure anywhere in Afghanistan."
Another man interviewed said: "If people are jobless they are capable of anything."
The survey suggests that many Afghans believe foreign aid does not reach those who need it most.
But international aid agencies and the US government don't like working through programs like the National Solidarity Program because it means handing money and responsibility to Afghans themselves instead of funnelling that funding to their own professional consultants and being able to dictate what projects will be done and how they'll be handled. It enriches the consultants and lets the aid agencies justify their efforts, but will as it did in Iraq produce hospitals, schools, water systems, roads, hydro projects and other infrastructure that Afghans can't afford or lack the skills to run and maintain, and that they have no personal investment in or interest in protecting.
$70 million was allocated by the US for the National Solidarity Program in 2009. Compare this to, say, the $7.4 billion requested for fiscal year 2010 for the Afghan Security Forces Fund, to train and equip the Afghan National Army and the Afghan National Police, and you can see where the priorities actually lie.
Undoubtedly those priorities lie more with the ongoing Great Game - the quest for supremacy in Central Asia - and with Afghanistan as a "lily pad." As is said of how Blackwater has positioned itself strategically in the region:
"This is the Jamestown of the new millennium and it's meant to be a lily pad. You can jump off to Uzbekistan, you can jump back over the border, you can jump sideways, you can jump northwest.
And the wishes of the Afghan people themselves? The help they need to get themselves back on their feet as a society that functions for themselves after being the playground for international warring factions for more than a generation? A distant afterthought compared to the real priorities.