Reconstruction and development in Afstan

Matthew Fisher of Canwest News continues to give the bigger picture:

Afghan minister sees hope in travels

Mohammed Esan Zia may be the most popular politician in Afghanistan. He certainly is the most well-travelled.

Mr. Zia has been the Minister for Rural Rehabilitation and Development since 2006. In that role the soft-spoken development expert has made about 100 trips to 34 of this country's 38 far-flung provinces. This has been no small feat, considering that the east and the south are in a state of war and that most of the country is inaccessible except by helicopter and donkey.

Mr. Zia, who has a master's degree in war recovery studies from Britain's York University, has no time for those learned publications that have recently predicted that the Taliban are winning the insurgency.

"The reason I travel so much is so that I can come face-to-face with the hope and determination of our people," he said during an hour-long discussion in his office. "They want to play a role in the development of our villages, which constitute our identity.

"The tide is still in favour of our people. This is my strong belief. It is based upon what I see in rural Afghanistan where the population speaks confidently about tomorrow and does not think the war is lost."

Since the fall of the Taliban in late 2002, the National Solidarity Program has overseen 48,000 projects. All were designed to aid people in the rural communities that 70% of Afghans call home. The NSP has funded 400 schools and 1,400 micro hydro projects, many in the most remote parts of the country.

With the exception of two schools in Paktika province, which have since been repaired, none of the NSP-funded schools have attacked "because they were built by local people. There is genuine community ownership. For the first time people are being allowed to state their priorities and take on responsibilities."

Mr. Zia thanked Canada "for the degree of coordination and support" it has provided the Afghan government, especially its provincial reconstruction team in Kandahar.

"Without CIDA [Canadian International Development Agency] we would not have made the remarkable achievements we have in Kandahar [more on Canadian assistance here]," he said. "But there is a need for more investment."

In Mr. Zia's own "modest judgment," his ministry "has the capacity to spend $500-million a year on development." This year's budget is $350-million and only $230-million of that money has been pledged by the international community so far.

Mr. Zia has been frustrated because of "a lack of recognition that the Afghan government must lead. My humble submission to the international community is the critical need of this country to make its government and people of Afghanistan the owners of this process.".. [Nipa Banerjee, head of Canada's aid program in Afstan from 2003-06, has a similar view, more here.]