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Editor’s note: This is Part II of a two-part series focusing on aid provision in conflict zones. The first installment can be found here .

Ehsan Entezar’s Afghanistan 101, dryly academic though its language tends to be, is nevertheless an illuminating guide to the Afghanistan today. As a scholar born, raised, and educated in Afghanistan before obtaining his doctorate in the United States, Entezar lends the insight of a native son in illuminating the realities of Afghan culture and society, and by doing so, providing some sharp clues as to the likely efficacy of the aid programs that are allegedly “building” Afghanistan.[[BREAK]]

Entezar provides the following description of the political process in Afghanistan (the reader should keep in mind that, although this is a virtually perfect description of the farcical 2009 Presidential election in Afghanistan, Entezar’s book came out in 2007): “Once in power, a ruler tries to stay in power using any means at his disposal. No Afghan ruler has given up power willingly. A ruler will rig the electrons, force or bribe people to vote, or use other deceptive means to keep themselves in power until they are ousted from power by force.” It should be stated that past performance does not guarantee future results when it comes to Afghan leadership. Nevertheless, Entezar is clear that when it comes to legitimate power transfer, Afghanistan has a dismal legacy to overcome: Afghan national leaders are historically either murdered or otherwise forced from power, and little work has been done by the Afghan government or the United States and its allies to build durable democratic institutions in the country . Once in power, from the national level on down to regional and even local levels, it is routine for Afghan officials to obtain power for the purposes of self-enrichment, as in many developing or poor societies.

In one passage, Entezar looks at work habits and explains that Afghans, far more at the mercy their physical environment, lack of security, and the will of their neighbors than those in other developing or more developed countries, view life more as a matter of chance than choice (p. 64). Consequently, Afghans are focused on the immediate and highly concerned with reducing the uncertainty of life. “Planning, especially long term planning, is virtually non-existent in the workplace. Individual competition is disliked, and coworkers are described very unfavorably” (p. 67). Also notable is how young people (under the age of 50) are generally not trusted with any decision-making responsibility. Thus the notion of a smart and ambitious young “go getter” moving into a position of seniority in today’s Afghanistan and promoting reform is unlikely. Most frequently, those who attain a position of power and influence consider themselves above the law.

Rules are only to be followed by common Afghans without access to wealth or influence. Ethnic tensions, compounded by sectarian splits and other divides, have led Entezar to conclude that, “the establishment of a strong central government is no longer viable in Afghanistan….Some form of federalism is necessary.” Entezar presents a federal alliance built at a regional level, rather than a strong top-down government from Kabul, as the only way forward with a regional chance of success. This prescription serendipitously aligns with many of Moyo’s suggested reforms, which eschew central administration of massive aid programs for leaner and more efficient market solutions, often starting at local levels. To be clear, nowhere in his book does Entezar assert that many, many Afghans wouldn’t love to see a functioning central government,simply that, as of the 2007 publication date of “Afghanistan 101,” he did not believe a strong central government had a realistic chance of achieving the stability Afghanistan so desperately needs.

Given this analysis, the belief that the 2009 Presidential election would provide some thin patina of legitimacy to the Karzai government now looks hopelessly naïve, as does the threadbare hope that the Karzai government will ever meaningfully combat corruption, especially given Karzai’s own real and perceived needs to secure support for his government amongst an assortment of power-brokers. The willingness of Afghan officials to rob the aid community blind should thus not come as a shock (as the Kabul-based World-Bank official somehow found it), but rather something that foreign aid officials who took the time to investigate the currently prevailing social norms and political and economic realities in Afghanistan should have anticipated. In any place where planning is non-existent and corruption endemic, the notion that aid projects could be planned and run without of meticulous and unceasing personal scrutiny (which NGO workers hiding behind their blast-walls in Kabul have been signally unwilling to provide) becomes a near-absurdity.

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It is easy to be depressed after absorbing the gloomier ramifications of these three books. Fortunately, Moyo’s” Dead Aid” is not simply another vehicle for policy-bashing; it also contains prescriptive market-based solutions for weaning countries out of aid-dependency and putting them on the path to legitimate growth, even countries racked by corruption and civil war like Afghanistan.

The first, and hardest step, is turning off the aid tap. Governments that think the aid money will continue to flow, regardless of how reprehensible their behavior is, have no incentive to reform. For nay-sayers who assert that shutting off the aid would mean “health and education budgets wouldn’t be met, and countries would falter if the aid did not flow” Moyo notes wryly that, ” The poor aren’t getting the money and besides…even under the aid regime, (African) countries are faltering” (pg 55). While she admits an abrupt termination of aid would be disastrous, Moyo prescribes a five-year timeline, with a reduction in aid levels each year, to start to dry up the swamp of corruption and allow market-based reforms to take hold.

One of the startlingly hopeful facts that Moyo relates is that even in very poor countries, there are vast savings available to fuel economic growth. Even if the United States were to considerably boost foreign aid allocations, it would still take 150 years to transfer to the world’s poor nations resources equal to those they already have . In corrupt regimes, personal funds are stashed under a pillow, while aid dollars looted from international donors are usually either placed in a foreign bank, or spent locally on luxuries. Very little of it is put to productive economic use, with the result being, despite a continuing river of aid pouring in, ongoing economic decay rather than internally-fueled growth. Moyo notes, “The core problem with Africa is not an absence of cash, but rather that financial markets are acutely inefficient-borrowers cannot borrow, and lenders do not lend, despite billions washing about.”

Moyo provides a variety of solutions for unlocking the native wealth, talent, and energy as surely present in the populace of Afghanistan as any other country. Some, such as “microlending,” are already in use and need to be expanded. Others, like “Conditional cash transfers,” in which specific people (not governments or large groups) are paid a cash bonuses after they achieve specific goals (e.g. graduating school), or “securitizing commodities” (e.g. a bond issue secured by mineral deposits) sound at first blush too complex and rather too investment-bankerish. But Moyo provides concrete examples of where each strategy has worked before, adeptly justifying how the collected reforms can generate growth. Africa is not Afghanistan, but readers are left with the distinct impression that, if challenged by the hypothetical assertion that “Growth cannot take place until the security situation is stabilized”, Moyo might the hypothetically reply with something like “Security IS absolutely vital for long-term economic growth, but waiting for the arrival of top-down security before starting local growth initiatives can only delay improvements in the security environment.”

Economic growth, more than anything else, is the only thing which will ultimately “build” the good governance Afghanistan lacks and along the way demonstrate the bankruptcy of the Taliban’s hard-line theocratic vision for Afghanistan.

Taken together, the The Crisis Caravan , Dead Aid , and Afghanistan 101 reinforce each other and make clear that following the traditional aid-based approach to nation-building in Afghanistan will lead to a massively expensive failure . This is not an indictment of the United States’ use of aid to Afghanistan in particular, but recognition that aid programs around the world, including those in Afghanistan, are deeply flawed. Entezar makes plain that Afghanistan, like many developing countries with weak institutions, has long had a major problem with corruption. Toss tendencies towards autocratic power and ethnic strife into the mix, and it comes as no surprise that competition for aid dollars has only accelerated and deepened problems with corruption, precisely as readers of Polman and Moyo would predict.

Before really considering the aid strategies that Moyo recommends for Africa, but which hold equal promise for countries like Afghanistan that are in similarly desperate straits, the United States first has to acknowledge how (unintentionally) pernicious our aid policies are. No quote so perfectly summarizes the need to reject failed aid policies and embrace bold changes as the African proverb Moyo uses to close her book:

“The best time to plant a tree is twenty years ago. The second-best time is now.”

Art Keller is a former case officer for the Central Intelligence Agency’s National Clandestine Service. He participated in counterterrorism operations against al-Qaeda in the FATA of Pakistan in 2006.

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