COMMENT As President Barack Obama starts to roll out his new Afghanistan strategy, he would be wise to assess carefully why a country that for several years after the fall of the Taliban was mostly at peace is now falling apart. Much of the answer lies in a failed strategy for civilian development over the last eight years. If the international community does not get its development priorities right now, no number of foreign troops will be able to pacify the country.
The international community has put strong emphasis on building the capacity for Afghans to take informed decisions. There has been much less focus on actually helping the Afghans get things done. The result has been an endless stream of ineffective policy advice – piles of reports in the different ministries in Kabul about how things should be done, but too little change on the ground affecting ordinary people’s lives.
