First aid

Celestial Junk has highlighted yet another report of NGO's complaining that military reconstruction is counterproductive and should be left to civilians:

ACF International believes that by concentrating on “construction”, that NATO is confusing the Afghan people and actually putting in jeopardy the whole mission. ACF argues that security is the main impediment to offering assistance to Afghans, and that soldiers need to be used to protect the people and bring law and order, not build roads. Road building, feeding, and constructing are jobs of the aid agencies, argues ACF, and not the military.

Most interesting of ACF arguments is that by getting involved in aid work, the military has made all aid agencies targets of the Taliban. The Taliban, and those Afghans sympathetic to them, now see little difference between “Feed the Children” and the “Royal Canadian Regiment”. It used to be that unarmed civilians did aid work … now it’s often men and women in body armour and backed by guns that do it… and that means juicy targets for the Taliban . The day the first soldier built the first school was the day the Taliban saw little difference between the RCR Road Crew and the NGO Blanket Crew.

The ACF is hardly alone among NGO's; Dr. John Watson, President and CEO of CARE Canada laid the argument out plainly enough for a Canadian audience earlier this year:

Is it only me that sees something terribly wrong with this picture? With due respect to the individuals involved, one hardly knows where to start with the breathtaking ignorance of this approach. These are not aid workers; these are government officials of a foreign occupying power. Afghans do not need to be told by outsiders when a project is theirs or not.

Let us be clear that military occupation as a rule makes things more dangerous for both national and international aid workers. For years, CARE operated in Saddam’s Iraq and in Taliban Afghanistan doing essential work under difficult conditions. It was only after the deployment of Western troops that our Country Director was murdered in Iraq and our office burned in Kabul.

While Dr. Watson raises some troubling issues regarding the mechanics of our aid to Afghanistan, the key flaw to his overall argument rests in his remarks above. He's proud of having worked in Taliban Afghanistan. On one level, of course, he should be: individual CARE workers certainly did good work, and at significant personal danger. But on a strategic level, what did his group change? Despite their best efforts, CARE could not prevent Afghanistan from sliding further and further into state-sponsored brutality, oppressive ignorance, and abject poverty.

What the NGO's seem to have difficulty accepting is that they were a band-aid solution in Afghanistan prior to the overthrow of the Taliban. The systemic change required for fundamental improvement in the lives of ordinary Afghans necessitated a military intervention. Whether we can translate the specific military victories achieved in the early days of that intervention into a sustainable long-term victory across all of Afghan society remains to be seen. But the one certainty is that, for all the good they do, the NGO's could not have created this opportunity.

In any event, a military presence - at the request of the Afghan government - is now the reality in Afghanistan, and the way forward must be planned with that fact in mind, whether the NGO's like it or not. How then to proceed with what every party to the discussion agrees is essential to lasting change: development?

Well, some like the ACF would have you believe that while soldiers may be useful at providing security, they should stay out of reconstruction altogether.

(I must take a moment to note that the CF seems to be damned if it does, and damned if it doesn't. Focus entirely on security, and the usual suspects crucify you for being a hammer and seeing every problem as a nail to be pounded into next week with military force. But as soon as the CF starts thinking outside the box and taking a wholistic approach, they're told to stay in their lane and out of development altogether. It must be frustrating to be a CIMIC officer these days.)

The most commonly employed reasoning to justify this stand is that using the military to build things turns everything they build into a target for insurgents. In Afghanistan, and against the Taliban, at least, this argument fails the smell test. When they held power, the Taliban would have demolished a school that allowed girls to attend irregardless of whether it was built by Afghans or Westerners. The idea that insurgents would allow significant reconstruction - not only of wells and schools, but of the foundations of their society - to occur if only it was done by civilians and not uniformed soldiers is a fantasy.

Besides, the idea that soliders are doing all the front-end work themselves is inaccurate. For example, the Village Medical Outreach (VMO) projects undertaken by the Kandahar PRT utilize Afghan doctors and dentists to provide basic medical attention to the local population. Canada simply provides security and supplies.

Moreover, if the NGO's can propose the idea that reconstruction done by Canadian soldiers hurts the overall rebuilding effort by tarnishing those projects with a military taint, they should also accept the mirroring proposition that reconstruction done by Canadian soldiers mitigates any perception of them as single-minded enforcers and makes their security mission an easier one. Sauce for the goose, and all that.

Personally, I see reconstruction done by the KPRT as First Aid for the country. The analogy breaks down if you take it too far, as does any analogy, but I like to think of the PRT as paramedics performing basic lifesaving functions for Afghan society, while the rest of our military contingent speeds the country towards the hospital where more intensive and specialized care can be given - to a point in the progress of Afghanistan where NGO's can work without danger and the Afghan government can take over much of the reconstruction and security work themselves.

But if the military pulls back from development work to concentrate solely on defence, who exactly will do the development? Neither the Afghans themselves, nor the NGO community can operate in rural southern Afghanistan without the protection of a Western military. And according to the naysayers, even that protection taints their work, and renders it unusable in the eyes of the locals and their Taliban leaders. It's a Catch-22 - and one ungrounded in reality.

The National Solidarity Programme (NSP) works with the KPRT to carry out development projects chosen at the local level by elected Community Development Councils (CDC's). If you don't know about the NSP, follow the above link and read up on what is a fantastic ground-level initiative. Their statistics as of September 30th, 2006 are impressive:

• No. of Community Development Councils Elected - 14,558


• No. of Community Development Plans Prepared - 13,685


• No. of Subproject Proposals Submitted - 21,942


• No. of Approved Sub-projects - 21,629 (98.6% of submitted)


• No. of Subprojects completed - 7,841 (35.7% of submitted)

In Kandahar province, 427 CDC's have been elected (106 of them for women), and 700 projects have already been completed. But here's the key figure that destroys the NGO arguments: according to the Canadian government, less than one percent of the initiatives launched through the National Solidarity Program have been destroyed or targeted by insurgents. So much for the taint of military involvement.

We're helping these people back to their feet - the progress is significant and measurable, even if it's not happening as quickly as we'd like.

This is not to say that our reconstruction efforts are perfect as they are. Eric Lehre, a former flag officer in the Canadian Navy, is highly critical of the Defence, Diplomacy, and Development (3D) approach as it has been applied so far in Kandahar. While I believe Lehre is overly pessimistic ("The application of the 3-D concept in Kandahar was a failure") he raises some strong concerns: most notably a lack of commitment by departments other than DND to the 3D concept, and a lack of responsiveness and follow through on promises made to Afghans. In his words, "It is too early to judge the 3-D concept a failure based on our experience in Kandahar - the concept was not followed."

Anyone interested in the 3D construct should read Lehre's piece in its entirety. I cannot recommend it strongly enough - not for its conclusions, but for the questions it poses.

Among those questions is whether 3D can ever succeed without the buy-in of the NGO community to the concept. One wonders if the likes of Dr. Watson will be allowed to both undermine the Canadian effort, and then at the end of the day say "I told you so" without being fingered for complicity in the failure.

But even Lehre at his most cynical, proposing that the 3D concept be shelved until all parties can commit to it properly, cannot realistically endorse the NGO solution, which is a full retreat from the development arena by our military. In fact, his solution is exactly the opposite:

Regrettably, there is no guarantee that a more complete assessment of the Canadian 3-D approach will follow this effort. Even if it does, a detailed review will take time. Meanwhile, Canadian lives are being lost in Afghanistan. Further, the evidence is increasingly demonstrating that any development measure that improves the lives of the Afghani will result in greater support to coalition forces. This suggests that immediate action is required in advance of any such fuller study. Until that review is complete and until CIDA can generate the personnel and financial resources to re-qualify for membership in the 3-D partnership, the concept should be put into abeyance. In the interim, the military commander should be immediately given the $30 million his U.S counterparts enjoy for local development projects and, most critically, the local authority to spend it rapidly. He should be provided whatever federal officials or military officers are needed to ensure funding and project delivery follows within two weeks of a local agreement. As quickly as the security situation allows and as quickly as CIDA can generate a meaningful contribution, the military commander should return the coordination of development over to the development experts.

Intelligent observers may bemoan the way our country is pursuing its development agenda in Afghanistan, and may prophesy failure if we do not radically overhaul it. There is a great deal of evidence to support their case, if not a conclusive amount. But no thinking observer can realistically propose the immediate and total withdrwal of the military from reconstruction efforts. The NGO's should be firmly told to stop being part of the problem, and start contributing to a lasting solution. Until they do, military development is the only game in town.