How'd We Do?

"The impression is of a major planning effort, meticulously documented, but divorced from reality.  Artificially maintaining forward progress on a few indicators so that there is something positive to report (e.g. more training, more equipment, more schools built is much like pushing a rope, and may be actually counterproductive if it ignores deeper institutional problems."
CIDA Afghanistan program report

These are a series of reports auditing CIDA's performance as Canada's leading foreign-aid intervention authority, and coming to the conclusion that CIDA is not as flexible and innovative as it should be, responding to the situation they find on the ground, within communities reflecting culture and tradition, and structuring their aid programs and phasing them in as a reflection of those conditions.

Instead, CIDA relies on installing their own programs without regard to the social and cultural situations endemic within communities that are religion-led and steeped in well-entrenched practises dating to the Medieval era.  This makes for a very poor fit.  Canada has deluded itself in feeling it could take structures and programs suited to a Canadian environment and install them in Afghanistan.

With the erroneous expectation that village elders would have any interest in, much less commitment to administering those structures and programs in any meaningful way that would make use of their valuable contribution to a society unused to, and unprepared for modern innovations that would improve the quality of life of the villagers.

The Government of Canada has a more rosy outlook on the sacrifices and commitments that were pledged for Afghanistan by this country.  "At every turn, our soldiers and civilian professionals in Afghanistan showed the highest level of dedication to the challenges they faced.  Their immeasurable moral commitment to this mission has improved the lives of the Afghan people.  They have made Canada and Canadians proud."  According to the Prime Minister, in any event.

And who can blame him completely?  It is wishful thinking.  We would far prefer to believe that the lives lost, the efforts contributing to this decade-long exposure to guerrilla war, roadside bombs, poverty, neglect, civilian deaths by terrorists, were worth it all.  That goodwill attempts to enrich the lives of Afghans, to teach their children, render health services to them, would be long-lasting.

CIDA's fiercest critic, Nina Bannerjee, who once was responsible for administering that very same program, handing out $100-million yearly in aid, then recommending to the government that they choose Kandahar province over the more peaceful Herat, was herself partially responsible for the failures she now condemns.  She felt Kandahar was more needy, had no idea of the ferocity of the Taliban presence.

And the developments that Canada, through CIDA, tasked itself to complete to improve the lives of Afghans simply did not proceed to completion largely because of an ever-increasingly dangerous situation with the Taliban ensconcing themselves in control of large swaths of the province.  A province whose people they were comfortably familiar with, representing their own tribal affiliation. 

"Insurgents are living among the people as a fish in the sea while the government and its international supporters are at best treading water.  Is the Canadian mission doing enough to understand the context in which it works and the actors with whom it is engaged?" thundered the report, the last one of which was completed in 2009.

"CIDA is not an innovative organization", stated the report.  "It is crucial to understand that there is a built-in disconnect between ... the donors' appetite for hard evidence that their money is producing the intended results and, on the other hand, the vagueness of state building, characterized by false starts dead ends and trial-and-error innovation."

Canada is, of course, not alone in its self-delusion.  The American administration basks in self-congratulation claiming to have handily defeated the Taliban, in bringing Afghanistan to a better place where it will be able to function as a normal country, its military and national police capable of fending off the insurgency that has never died. 

While its military, reflecting that of Great Britain, ruefully conclude that all the combined efforts add up to a hugely disconnected zero.