I thought I was the only one perplexed by the "military" doing "development"

...but I am finding out that the more I talk to people, the more confident I get that the military-development marriage is a flawed, if not arranged or even worse, forced one.

With all due to respect to the military people and their mentality, but how would they feel if a group of economists started doing their job? When did we throw away our close-to-heart concepts of "specialization" and "you do what you are best at and I do what I am best at"? I wonder how many of the guys in their uniform haven been adequately trained on participative democracy, or rural development or poverty and inequality, etc., which they claim to tackle all at once in addition to defeating insurgency, and many other lofty goals the set for themselves. William Easterly, whose ideas and works I deeply respect, commented on the utopian goals set in the Army Field Manuals. Read it for yourself for more details.

The PRTs in Afghanistan have a "clear, hold, build" strategy. While I respect their intents to do good, if I were them, I would be humbled to do the first two alone, leaving the third part of the strategy to those who are better (more effective and more efficient) at "building", but that's me...

One of the people we talked to in the US Forces in Afghanistan was wondering why NGOs would not want to be within miles of the military. I wonder why one would wonder on such questions...

The French government seems to have nothing better to do....

but to study what people wear and if they should ban what they wear...why not think of ways on how to integrate the French Muslim community, about 7% of the country's population? Or more importantly, tackle the financial crisis? They seem to get a kick out of discussing the term "burqa", which by the way, despite its reference to what some women wear in Afghanistan, no one in Afghanistan would know the term!

Dead Aid: Why Aid is Not Working and How There is a Better Way for Africa

Dead Aid: Why Aid is Not Working and How There is a Better Way for Africa

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Dambisa Moyo is my new hero!

It is "sad, but true" that you rarely find people using commensese to answer the so called "complicated" questions of development, when at least in certain cases like extremely poor or post conflict countries the answer lies right in front of our eyes - excessive unemployment!

this is what Dambisa Moyo, Odford PhD and Harvard graduate, is trying to tell the world in her recent book "Dead Aid".

She reminds us in her recent post that "Don't forget that the over 60 percent of Africans that are under the age of 24 need jobs not sympathy" which is what Ralph and I have been pushing for since 2007 in our jobs-for-afghans efforts. I just wish there were more people thinking like her and our world would have been a much better place.

The 2009 Iranian Elections...fraud?

We are witnessing one of the most critical points in Iranian history....this election is potentially the turning point for Iran and their relationships with the rest of the world, especially the US. Based on yesterday's polling results, Ahmadinejad has won by more than 60% of the votes, while there are many indications that the truth could be otherwise - people in Tehran taking it to streets in thousands and violent clashes with the police is a sign that this is not what they expected. Other signs include blocking sms a day before elections, power going off whenever Mousavi wanted to make a speech, internet sites and facebook getting blocked, etc.

Amanpur of BBC and many more had predicted that the leading opponent, Mir-Hossein Mousavi, would win by a landslide. Mousavi himself declared himself as victorious and arguing that the counting is ridden with fraud. For many of the Iranian citizens, Mousavi represented their hope for the future - much like Obama did with his message of change for the American public.

As my wife, Salma, argues, what many people outside of Iran don't know is that the 75% turnout is an indication that people in millions did not come out to re-elect the much less populat Ahamdinejad, but to push for a change by voting for the reformist Mousavi. Let's see how long people can sustain their resistance and continue challenging the results.

JobsforAfghans and Pictures from our Kabul Visit

Myself and Ralph at a press conference in Kabul

A little more about the JobsforAfghans initiative and some pictures from our visit. In brief, our initiative is in response to the multiple reports - especially those from Oxfam's Matt Waldman and ACBAR (Agency Coordinating Body for Afghan Relief) - that state multiple reasons for foreign aid not reaching its potentials in the context of Afghanistan. Few of those points are listed below:

• Per capita amounts of aid in Afghanistan is about $60 per Afghan, while the Marshall plan allocated about 10 times as much per European in late 40s.
• Yet, aid accounts for nearly 90% of public expenditure. Government revenues is on the rise, but far from levels required for a country to stand on its own feet.
• Apprximately $20billion has been spent in Afghanistan in reconstruction aid since the fall of Taliban in late 2001.
• US military expenditure (at about $34billion per year) is more than 10 times non-military expenditure in Afghanistan. ==> An obvious implication is that reallocating 10% of military expenditure to humanitarian assistance will more than double the aid dollars in the country!
• Around 40-50% of aid dollars make their way back out of Afghanistan to donor countries in the form of high consultant salaries and corporate profits.
• Alot of reconstruction work, especially large-scale projects like building highways or constructing schools, etc., are contracted out to for profit firms, often hiring either foreign labor or using capital equipment and machinery istead of hiring local labor. Many other projects are similarly sub-contracted multiple times, each layer taking profits and often high admin costs.
• Consultants receive as high as $500,000 a year in Afghanistan. I wonder how they can justify these amounts in a country where about 40% of the people will kill for a $4/day job, which is what daily wage earners get (if they are lucky enough to find work). In place of one such consultant, we could feed 500 families by giving one member 250 workdays of paid job in a year. I bet this would much more effective at "winning hearts and minds" than what a consultant can bring to a country that s/he may know very little about!

So in brief, we are proposing mega scale, labor intensive projects that would curb the 40% unemployment rate as top priority. Cash-for-work type of projects is one way to achieve this goal. As far as implementation is concerned, we propose that all the points above must be avoided i.e. multiple layers of contracting must be eliminated, hiring expensive consultants should be minimized, money should makes it way directly to the poor as much as possible, minimizing admn costs to the extent possible, etc. Anyway, for more details you cangoogle jobsforafghans or visit our webiste http://www.jobsforafghans.org/



Here are a few more pictures from our visit:

This is Ralph arriving at Kabul airport - all happy!

There are several spots like this in Kabul where unemployed men wait as early as 3am hoping to find a day's job for about Rs.200 a day ($4/day).

This is an example of the kind of projects we are proposing. This is a $25m cash for work project, funded by USAID, implemented by CARE International, 80% of project cost is daily wages for these men and women fixing drainage system and graveling roads.

Our Kabul Visit for the initiative: www.jobsforafghans.org

I have been meaning to write about this since I returned from my visit last week, but procastination seems to have taken over my determination to write...honestly it is my fear of blogging - I keep telling myself "wait, write it down on a seperate sheet first, make sure it reads well, then post it...", but today I decided to post something anyway, I can always add a more polished version later (ya right).

So anyway, what was my visit all about? It is about an initiative that basically started out from a conversation with a random peace activist, Ralph Lopez (now not a random guy, but a great friend, a colleague and co-founder of JobsforAfghans) in Cambridge about three years ago. When I first met Ralph and upon finding out that I am from Afghanistan, he got all excited and asked that we meet again, I was thinking with myself "everyone wants to talk to this guy from Afghanistan" and never made an effort to see him again. But he was determined (well, an activist has to be) and he found me again and after a couple of conversations and exchange of ideas, he was basically kind enough to label me as his "co-founder" in his initiative now known as JobsforAfghans.

So long story short, from those random conversations, we now found ourselves meeting some of the most important players in Afghanistan. We have been getting tremendous response lately, espeically on our visit to Kabul last week hosted by an Aghan NGO called DHSA (Development Humanitarian Services for Afghanistan). Thanks to Shahir and Melek of DHSA, we spoke with and were warmly welcomed by government agencies, donor organizations (USAID, UNAMA, CIDA), embassies (Norway, Canada, Italy and US), local and internatinal NGOs (Care International, DACAAR), US Forces Deputy Commanding General (Macdonald) and his PAO (Col. Julian), small businesses, enthusiastic and committed individuals and most importantly ordinary Afghans, the unemployed, laborers etc.

Our webiste is http://www.jobsforafghans.org/. The picture above is myself and Ralph on Tap-e-Nadir Khan (The Nadir Khan Hill) overlooking one side of the beatuiful Kabul. Will add more details and pictures later...

My first posting on my blog!

Technically, this is the second posting, I first blogged on indiadevelopmentblog connected to IFMR, but this is the first posting on my OWN blog :) Being seated next to a technology geek (Shannon Spanhake), I was finally able to overcome my fear and started writing. Time will tell if I can sustain it. Also hoping that for my future postings, I will have more to say than just five lines.