What Billions in U.S. Aid Accomplished in Afghanistan: 5 Questions Answered

Some$150 billion in nonmilitary U.S. aidflowed into Afghanistan from 2001 to 2020, plus billions more from its allies andinternational organizations．

For those two decades, Afghanistan's economic development aid largely fundededucation, health care, governance reforms and infrastructure — including schools, hospitals, roads, dams and other major construction projects.

One notable result in terms of education was thatfar more students were enrolled in school．The number of students jumped from 900,000 in 2001 to more than 9.5 million in 2020.Foreign aid helped buildabout 20,000 elementary schools, and the number of universities grew sharply as well. The number of Afghans enrolled in higher education programs soared from 7,000 in 2001 to about 200,000 in 2019. There were no female college students in 2001, but there were54,861 in 2019．

The share of girls among all students reached39 percent in 2020, versus only an estimated5,000 in 2001．

Likewise, aid increased access tohealth carefor most of the population.Life expectancy roseover the two decades by about a decade, to 64.8 years in 2019, according to the World Bank.

Afghanistan also made progress in terms of governance reform, with the adoption of anew constitution in 2004that established a framework for liberal democratic governance and protecting human rights. It held four presidential and provincial council elections andthree parliamentary elections．

The country also adoptedhundreds of new laws and regulationsregarding education, health, insurance, budgeting, mining, women rights and land titling.

International aid helped construct and pavethousands of miles of roads and streets, either rehabilitated or built from scratch.

Other infrastructure projects includedhydroelectric damsandsolar power plantsto generate electricity, bridges and irrigation and drinking water projects.

International development expertsdo not dispute that aid can make a positive difference. What they criticize is that this assistance, even in vast amounts, doesn't necessarily solve a country's problems. That is the case in Afghanistan.

Based on what I've seen firsthand in my research, the problem in Afghanistan was not the amount of aid, but its mismanagement.

The highly centralized governance system Afghanistan adopted in 2001 gave its president unconstrained political, fiscal and administrative power, without any way for the legislature or the public to hold theexecutive branch of government accountable．To a degree, the government was accountable to foreign donors, but this lack of checks and balances contributed tosystemic corruption．

A centralized public finance management system gave Afghanistan's president complete control and discretion over planning, budgeting and taxation. He could also tactically allocate government spending to curry favor with elites, interest groups and voters.

Afghanistan's$20 billion economywasheavily dependent on foreign aid, but its centralized governance system wasprone to mismanaging it．

For instance, the president had exclusive and unconstrained access to a large share of government funds.

I believe the only way to have fixed this problem, before the Taliban took over again, was todefund the countryand reform the aid management system in a way that the people had the opportunity to participate in the decision-making process. And I would expect to see a centralized, exclusive aid management system under the Taliban to replicate the same flaws and challenges seen in Afghanistan over the past two decades.

Economic assistance can support long-term economic development or help meet more immediate humanitarian objectives — such as providing food and shelter after disasters, or any help intended to save immediately imperiled lives.

As long as the Taliban remain in control, the only aid likely to flow from the U.S. and most of its allies will surely be thehumanitarian kind．Even that money, however, will likely be contingent upon whether Afghanistan's new authoritiesrespect human rights, form an inclusive government and prevent Afghanistan's territory from being used for terrorist purposes.

But the Taliban are mostlyrunning Afghanistanlike they did in the 1990s – with aniron fist．

TheTaliban's interim cabinetincludes no women or members of ethnic, religious and linguistic minorities. And there are reports that the Taliban are alreadyforcibly displacing people in Hazara communitiesandnot letting girls go to school．

The U.S. military and diplomatic withdrawal precipitated the collapse of the Afghan government and the Taliban's takeover, disrupting aid delivery.Thousands of foreign aid workersand their Afghan former colleagues have left the country.

The few exceptions include a handful of humanitarian aid programs: theNorwegian Refugee Council,Red Cross,Doctors witout Bordersand theWorld Food Programare allstill operating in Afghanistan．

In August 2021, theU.S. froze more than $9 billionof Afghanistan's assets. Nearly all sources of Afghanistan's aid, including theEuropean Union,International Monetary Fund and other multilateral organizations, stopped disbursing assistance.

"The economic and development outlook is stark," theWorld Bank observes．

On Sept. 13, 2021, the U.S. Agency for International Development said it would dispatch $64 million in new humanitarian aid to Afghanistan, channeling it through nonprofits and U.N. agencies. But it'snot clear, according to the Taliban, that this money is flowing yet.

In October 2021, the European Union pledged 1 billion euros, about$1.2 billion, in humanitarian aid and other forms of support．

In addition,Pakistanand China are providing emergency aid, as have a few other countries, includingQatar．

China and Pakistan are teaming up with Russia, Iran and India, along with some former Soviet Central Asian countries, to advocate for theU.N. to recognize the Talibangovernment, which could facilitate the flow of more aid.

The Taliban have not yet shown that they can actually govern Afghanistan.

抵抗组织正在形成, andISIS-K poses a significant threatto their ability to keep control of the country.

Perhaps more important, the Talibanlack the money and expertise requiredto satisfy the basic needs of the Afghan people.

Thousands of Afghan public servants are demanding their unpaid salaries. Afghans who used to work for nongovernmental organizations havelost their jobs, as havemany others．

An estimated14 million Afghanswere already having trouble getting enough to eat before the disruption of aid. That situation is nowgrowing more dire, according to UNICEF.

Mohammad Qadam Shah is an assistant professor of global development at Seattle Pacific University.

This article is republished fromThe Conversationunder a Creative Commons license. You can find the original article here.