While reading this article, a particular scene came to my mind from Tom Hanks' 2007 movie, "Charlie Wilson's War," which was about American collusion with Afghan mujahideen (freedom fighters) to topple USSR.
In that scene, America has essentially won the war by achieving its sole objective of defeating USSR & Tom Hanks (Charlie Wilson) is back with government leaders & asks for more funding. They ask why, since the war has already been won. Tom Hanks (Charlie Wilson) says that we need this funding to rebuild hospitals, schools, utilities infrastructure etc; basically, help the Afghans in rebuilding their society. Other government leaders laugh at him & Charlie Wilson never got the funding.
Afghanistan's infrastructure, post-USSR exit, never got any improvements. Due to continuing poverty, power struggles ensue, & fights broke out among different tribes, & eventually, Taliban rose up. They helped Al-Qaeda settle in Afghanistan & the rest is history.
Funny thing is that all these governments & the public never learn from their mistakes & as the saying goes that whoever doesn't learn from its mistakes is doomed to repeat it. Well, we are well on the road to repeating all those mistakes.
In one of my other blog posts, it was mentioned that ISIS is reaping billions from transporting drugs out of Afghanistan & into Europe & North America. Afghanistan has become a haven for opium farming & the whole world, especially the Western world, is going to suffer from it very heavily, when their populations are getting addicted to coke, heroin, hashish & etc drugs. Since, the economy & jobs are on the downhill slope, people are resorting to these drugs to alleviate their mental problems, like depression & stress. On top of that, Taliban are back in Afghanistan with a vengeance, & this time, they know nobody is there to stop them, since most of the Western world has their own problems to contend with.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Canada walked away from a decade-long $2.2 billion aid program in Afghanistan hoping the US would just carry on with its plan, an internal government audit has found.
Instead, Canada’s vision was left in the dust, officials told auditors looking into the largest aid program in government history, one of the 3 pillars of the effort to stabilize the war-torn country after the fall of the Taliban in 2001.
The massive aid program was supposed to bolster the military’s work in securing the country & diplomatic efforts to shore up its governance, a whole-of-government approach that in some ways should serve as a model for approaching similar conflicts in the future, the evaluation found.
But there were major flaws in the Afghan aid program’s conception & its delivery, the evaluation concluded, including a failure to ever completely understand what was driving the conflict in Afghanistan & in turn be able to really help solve it.
“Canada is recognized as a consistent & reliable donor with a clear results orientation, but there is insufficient evidence to provide a definitive answer to the overall evaluation question related to Canada’s contribution to long-term stability & sustainable development in Afghanistan,” the report said.
The ongoing & eventually worsening violence in Afghanistan has been largely blamed for keeping development programs from doing what they were ostensibly designed to do — help secure the peace won by the military.
When that peace was declared elusive & the military decided to leave Kandahar in 2011, aid officials were left to create exit strategies of their own — keeping a large-scale development program going was never an option, evaluators were told.
A decision was made to hand everything over to the US, & the Americans then started pursuing their own, differing, priorities, the report found.
“The frequent change of American staff on the ground meant that there was little institutional memory remaining to keep the strategic Canadian legacy alive,” the evaluation concluded.
“Many interviewees indicated that this exit strategy may have been short-sighted & that, given the enormous Canadian investments made in Kandahar, other alternatives should have been explored as was done by other bilateral donors.”
Canada’s 3 signature projects, the rehabilitation of the irrigation system flowing from the Dahla Dam, the construction of 50 schools & polio vaccination had mixed results.
More than 50 schools were actually built but it’s unclear how many are open & how many students are enrolled, while polio cases from Pakistan continue to infiltrate Afghanistan. The irrigation system repair achieved most of its objectives, but with no new money earmarked to continue the work, it is all at risk, the report found.
The emphasis on short-term implementation strategies may have seen projects completed faster, but came at the expense of ensuring sustainable long-term development results, the report said.
“However, a few years after the Canadian exit from Kandahar, there is limited evidence of positive outcomes in terms of more jobs, enhanced income opportunities or better quality of services outside of the health & education sectors,” the report said.
While the politics of the Afghan mission may be a thing of the past for Canadian parliamentarians, they reared their head for the evaluation team, who reported feeling some pressure to emphasize the positive results of the aid program in their report.
In the end, they drew 9 conclusions from their study & provided 5 recommendations. In its response to the report, the government acknowledged the program’s shortcomings & agreed with many of the evaluation’s conclusions.
Canada has committed to spending $227 million in Afghanistan between 2014 & 2017 but the report suggests Afghans are left wanting.
“There are still positive developments at the community level as a result of improved physical infrastructure & strengthened community organizations, but there are also clear signs of frustration & anger, despite the fact that some development activities are continuing,” the report said.
In that scene, America has essentially won the war by achieving its sole objective of defeating USSR & Tom Hanks (Charlie Wilson) is back with government leaders & asks for more funding. They ask why, since the war has already been won. Tom Hanks (Charlie Wilson) says that we need this funding to rebuild hospitals, schools, utilities infrastructure etc; basically, help the Afghans in rebuilding their society. Other government leaders laugh at him & Charlie Wilson never got the funding.
Afghanistan's infrastructure, post-USSR exit, never got any improvements. Due to continuing poverty, power struggles ensue, & fights broke out among different tribes, & eventually, Taliban rose up. They helped Al-Qaeda settle in Afghanistan & the rest is history.
Funny thing is that all these governments & the public never learn from their mistakes & as the saying goes that whoever doesn't learn from its mistakes is doomed to repeat it. Well, we are well on the road to repeating all those mistakes.
In one of my other blog posts, it was mentioned that ISIS is reaping billions from transporting drugs out of Afghanistan & into Europe & North America. Afghanistan has become a haven for opium farming & the whole world, especially the Western world, is going to suffer from it very heavily, when their populations are getting addicted to coke, heroin, hashish & etc drugs. Since, the economy & jobs are on the downhill slope, people are resorting to these drugs to alleviate their mental problems, like depression & stress. On top of that, Taliban are back in Afghanistan with a vengeance, & this time, they know nobody is there to stop them, since most of the Western world has their own problems to contend with.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Canada walked away from a decade-long $2.2 billion aid program in Afghanistan hoping the US would just carry on with its plan, an internal government audit has found.
Instead, Canada’s vision was left in the dust, officials told auditors looking into the largest aid program in government history, one of the 3 pillars of the effort to stabilize the war-torn country after the fall of the Taliban in 2001.
The massive aid program was supposed to bolster the military’s work in securing the country & diplomatic efforts to shore up its governance, a whole-of-government approach that in some ways should serve as a model for approaching similar conflicts in the future, the evaluation found.
But there were major flaws in the Afghan aid program’s conception & its delivery, the evaluation concluded, including a failure to ever completely understand what was driving the conflict in Afghanistan & in turn be able to really help solve it.
“Canada is recognized as a consistent & reliable donor with a clear results orientation, but there is insufficient evidence to provide a definitive answer to the overall evaluation question related to Canada’s contribution to long-term stability & sustainable development in Afghanistan,” the report said.
The ongoing & eventually worsening violence in Afghanistan has been largely blamed for keeping development programs from doing what they were ostensibly designed to do — help secure the peace won by the military.
When that peace was declared elusive & the military decided to leave Kandahar in 2011, aid officials were left to create exit strategies of their own — keeping a large-scale development program going was never an option, evaluators were told.
A decision was made to hand everything over to the US, & the Americans then started pursuing their own, differing, priorities, the report found.
“The frequent change of American staff on the ground meant that there was little institutional memory remaining to keep the strategic Canadian legacy alive,” the evaluation concluded.
“Many interviewees indicated that this exit strategy may have been short-sighted & that, given the enormous Canadian investments made in Kandahar, other alternatives should have been explored as was done by other bilateral donors.”
Canada’s 3 signature projects, the rehabilitation of the irrigation system flowing from the Dahla Dam, the construction of 50 schools & polio vaccination had mixed results.
More than 50 schools were actually built but it’s unclear how many are open & how many students are enrolled, while polio cases from Pakistan continue to infiltrate Afghanistan. The irrigation system repair achieved most of its objectives, but with no new money earmarked to continue the work, it is all at risk, the report found.
The emphasis on short-term implementation strategies may have seen projects completed faster, but came at the expense of ensuring sustainable long-term development results, the report said.
“However, a few years after the Canadian exit from Kandahar, there is limited evidence of positive outcomes in terms of more jobs, enhanced income opportunities or better quality of services outside of the health & education sectors,” the report said.
While the politics of the Afghan mission may be a thing of the past for Canadian parliamentarians, they reared their head for the evaluation team, who reported feeling some pressure to emphasize the positive results of the aid program in their report.
In the end, they drew 9 conclusions from their study & provided 5 recommendations. In its response to the report, the government acknowledged the program’s shortcomings & agreed with many of the evaluation’s conclusions.
Canada has committed to spending $227 million in Afghanistan between 2014 & 2017 but the report suggests Afghans are left wanting.
“There are still positive developments at the community level as a result of improved physical infrastructure & strengthened community organizations, but there are also clear signs of frustration & anger, despite the fact that some development activities are continuing,” the report said.
No comments:
Post a Comment