When More Is Less: The International Project in Afghanistan

by Astri Suhrke

Western-led efforts to establish a post-Taliban order in Afghanistan are in serious jeopardy. Beginning with the dynamics of Western intervention and its parallel peacebuilding mission, Astri Suhrke examines the forces that have shaped this grand international project and the apparent systemic bias toward deeper and broader international involvement. Many reasons have been cited for the weak achievements and ever-growing complications of rebuilding Afghanistan, commonly pinpointing hostile regional, national, and international actors. Suhrke finds the policies themselves to be primarily at fault, and she condemns the extraordinary and unnecessary complexity of the multinational operation. Her main argument is that the international project to reconstruct Afghanistan contains serious tensions and contradictions that have significantly impeded progress. As a result, deepening Western involvement in the region has been dysfunctional rather than helpful, and massive international support has created an extensively weak, corrupt, and unaccountable state. U.S.-led military operations have only undermined the peacebuilding agenda, and increased international aid and monitoring have only led to Afghan resentment and evasion. Suhrke instead proposes a less intrusive international presence and recommends a longer time-frame for carrying out reconstruction. She also encourages negotiations with militants to introduce a more Afghan-directed order.

256 pages, Hardcover

First published September 1, 2011

Reviews

[Julie Capell · Rating 4 out of 5]

I picked up this book after hearing about it in "The Underground Girls of Kabul." I was mainly interested in chapter 5, which dealt with NGOs and the effect the international aid money had on Afghanistan. At the beginning of the war, about $2.5 billion (yes, billion with a "b") of international aid was given to Afghanistan per year. By 2005-6 the amount went up to $5 billion. The next several years it was $8 billion per year.

The book didn't really get into exactly what all this money was supposed to be paying for, but it does detail how a large chunk of it was used for "statebuilding." Because at the time Afghanistan essentially had no functioning government, a priority for the (mostly western) coalition forces was getting a government up and running. Turns out this is pretty difficult to do, particularly in a place where there is also no functioning legal economy (the illegal market in poppies was, however, booming). The author says that by mid-decade domestic revenue was just 5% of legal GDP and by the end of the decade it was just 8%. In other words, the government had no way to collect revenues (taxes) to pay for its own operations.

Consequently, foreign aid made up the difference. Aid money was used to pay the salaries of a new cadre of Afghan civil servants to replace those "legacy" government employees who were in their posts due to patronage. Some government ministries ended up having 40-50% of their salaries paid by foreign aid.

The result of all this foreign aid was the creation of a "rentier state." I had never heard this term before, but it is a state in which:
- Rulers are accountable to foreign donors, not their own people
- Rulers are unlikely to develop effective administrations because they are not accountable to the taxpayers (no one is paying taxes)
- Vulnerable to external forces over which the rulers have no control

The author further contends that foreign aid to Afghanistan created a negative spiral. Local institutions, incapable of handling the large amount of money and contracts coming in, fall back on corrupt practices. This calls for calls for increased control over the money by donor nations. This slows down execution of work, so less money gets to the people. Initial goodwill is squandered. Leads to demands for more aid and bringing in more outside experts to produce results, so local people even less empowered than before. Thus, the title of the book, "When More is Less."

So while this was not entirely what I was hoping to learn from this book, it was still extremely interesting and put a new perspective on the situation for me. I'd still like to find a book that deals in more detail with the way international NGOs worked in Afghanistan during 2002-2010.

[Colin · Rating 3 out of 5]

Published in 2011, and brings back memories of many of the debates over Afghanistan from that time. The arguments here feel quite familiar (I think I’ve echoed a few of them myself, though I’m only just reading this now), in part perhaps because this book has been widely cited in other works - so 3.5 stars, maybe 4 if you are just coming to the subject. The book is a concise critique of the international intervention in Afghanistan, focusing primarily on how that intervention served to fuel a rentier state perpetually dependent on continued international support, and how the international community was determined to continue its intervention despite many evident problems for reasons of bureaucratic inertia and self-interest, sunk costs and reputational commitment arguments, and liberal peace / state-building theories that saw Afghanistan as a high-profile and resource-rich testing ground. Discussion of the latter is strongest where the UN and NATO is concerned, and the policymaking debate in the United States is perhaps less deeply explored. The intervention has obviously evolved and continued since this time so some aspects of the book have been overtaken by subsequent events (particularly as the coalition of actors invested in Afghanistan has shrunk along with the size of the investment), but all in all the critique still largely holds up.