Militarized aid in Afghanistan

Too much aid for Afghanistan is being channelled through foreign militaries who try to win over ordinary Afghans with "quick fixes" instead of tackling the root causes of poverty, aid groups said on Wednesday.

Under political pressure to produce results, countries with troops in Afghanistan were funnelling more of their money through military projects that showed little evidence of improving security and in some cases put the lives of Afghans at risk, the aid groups said.

In a report released on Wednesday, British charity Oxfam and seven other foreign aid groups called on international leaders attending a conference on the war-torn country in London on Thursday to change the way they carried out development.

The report calls on foreign countries with troops in Afghanistan to establish a plan to gradually phase out military Provincial Reconstruction Teams and focus instead on providing security and reforming the Afghan security forces.

PRTs carry out reconstruction projects and are made up of joint civil-military personnel. They have been criticised in the past for blurring the lines between military and humanitarian efforts.

Some quotes from the report that can be found here:

-While it costs approximately $1 million a year to support the deployment of one US soldier in Afghanistan, an average of just $93 in development aid has been spent per Afghan per year over the past seven years.

-The US alone has spent $227 billion on military operations in Afghanistan since 2001, while all donors together have spent less than 10% of this amount on development aid.

-Development projects implemented with military money or through military-dominated structures aim to achieve fast results but are often poorly executed, inappropriate and do not have sufficient community involvement to make them sustainable. There is little evidence this approach is generating stability and, in some cases, military involvement in development activities is, paradoxically, putting Afghan lives further at risk as these projects quickly become targeted by anti-government elements.

-The militarized aid approach focuses not on alleviating poverty but on winning the loyalty of Afghans through the provision of aid.

-Another practice that is putting civilians at risk is the use of aid as an incentive to extract
information. US commanders are authorized to offer rewards “paid in cash or in the form of
like-kind benefits such as food, local amenities, necessities, vehicles or communal rewards”
to individuals who they believe can provide valuable intelligence. Offering food and other
aid in exchange for information in a country where a third of the population is at risk of
hunger is not only unethical, it puts Afghans in potential danger of being targeted by antigovernment groups.