Letter to Friends and Family #13: the surge may work; the splurge surely won't

Up north, in Kunduz, the Germans have the lead in development and in military activity. USAID definitely plays a secondary role and, consequently, keeps the budget as low as its profile. Basically, I have been whining about the lack of resources (i.e., “Show me the money! Can’t you see I’m hungry up here?”).

That attitude changed drastically when I attended a contracting course with many colleagues in the two primary theaters of the Afghan War: Kandahar and the south as well as Bagram and the east. These regions comprise the Pashtun belt whence the Taliban came and where trouble remains.

My colleagues worried out loud about having too many dollars to commit too quickly! Initially, I felt the ‘burden’ of too much money to shovel out the door as quickly as possible was a high-class problem.

WRONG. Over the ten day life of this course, however, I came to believe that excess monies undermine the enthusiasm of high-minded people for surprisingly evident reasons.

First, capital inflows into Afghanistan surpassed long ago the country's saturation limit. By drowning in liquidity, Afghanistan has the appearance of a society on a lightning-fast mend from centuries of poverty and pain.

But that burgeoning wealth is bogus and represents short-term funding for unsustainable projects and, worse, a catalyst of greater corruption. President Obama’s prudent time-table, unhappily, has had at least one unintended effect: corrupt local political brokers realize that the aid spigot is about to be shut-off and are busy grabbing what they can.

But once the imported liquidity dries out, the Afghan withdrawal from an addiction to other people's money will almost certainly trigger renewed, and savage, civil strife. The one-eyed bandit will look clairvoyant and Al Qaida sympathetic by comparison.

Second, this massive display of ‘generosity’ simply does not work. After eight years of allied presence in their cities and villages, most Afghans have formed firm opinions about the success, failure, desirability or repugnance of a forceful foreign presence.

Additionally, there simply are not enough skilled laborers in the country to complete and maintain the projects in process or in the planning stage.

Third, my colleagues feel very vulnerable. The requirement to dispense with so much money so quickly subverts the USAID due-diligence process. My acquaintances despise this 'spending at all costs', as the U.S. government equates dollars obligated and funded with success.

Well – “surprise” writ large across the sky – it is not working. And for reasons additional to the sobering fact that, at best, 20% of the “billions and billions” of aid dollars actually reach Afghan beneficiaries. Worse, many of the funds funnel over to the enemy.

Further, my peers foresee a day when the U.S. government’s accounting ‘Gotcha-Goons’ will picking through every nook and cranny of twisted documentation to find fraud, waste and abuse. Given the complexity and unwieldiness of the grants documentation, combined with the surfeit of aid that overwhelms it, my colleagues dread the day when investigators may impugn their professional integrity over policy errors and errant appropriations emanating from Washington.

The part that drives my colleagues to anxiety are emerging sadnesses: that 75-85% of the Afghans will remain illiterate throughout this spree; that girls all-too-often will continue not going to school; and, that women will face brutal hurdles in exercising their electoral franchise.

The solutions to this queasy quandary number as many as the people proposing them. Cobbling together bits of some ideas with pieces of others produces a simple policy.

First, cease all funding for long-term projects that lie ahead of the Afghan learning curve. Then place these ‘de-obligated’ funds into a trust to be spent down over the next generation as Afghans mature their capabilities to use them wisely.

Second, suspend any further work in the Pashtun provinces for at least six months to see who and where the bad guys are; they will be ‘razing hell’ soon enough.

Third, target the surge toward these ‘unpacified’ areas.

Fourth, turn over all USAID ‘stabilization’ programming to the military for use under the Commander’s Emergency Response Program. USAID is not suited for palliatives. Moreover, those released funds allow the Army field soldiers to apply $750 million for consequence management during the surge. It just may save their lives.

Lastly, diminish USAID personnel to 25% and funding to 10% of their current levels in Afghanistan to focus activities on tranquil parts of the country. Good citizenship should be supported first and now.

And why are these solutions, and others like them, “meet and right so to do”? Otherwise, we leave a sullied legacy of civil strife, of ethnic cleansing and of “life being nasty brutish and short”.