Post-Taliban Recovery and Community-Driven Development in Afghanistan
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yielded successful transitions, we encounter both disappointment and hope in local people’s testimonies. The people of Afghanistan began a new quest for postconflict normalization and development after the removal of the Taliban regime and the installation of an interim government in 2001. Thanks in part to growing international attention and aid, the new government implemented a wide range of national reconstruction and development programs. In the years following the removal of the Taliban, foreign aid made up as much as 40 percent of the national income and nearly 90 percent of government expenditures, contributing to an astonishing growth rate of 29 percent in 2002 and 13 percent (on average) between 2003 and 2006.5 Despite this impressive performance, aid-driven aggregate growth did not always translate into successful local recovery, mainly because of four problems. First, a significant portion of the foreign aid was used in 2001–02 to finance short-term humanitarian needs, while long-term reconstruction projects remained underfunded. In 2004 Afghanistan had the lowest aid per capita figure among all postconflict reconstruction cases (Rubin et al. 2004), and the country has received only 60 percent of $25 billion that was pledged by the international community in 2001.6 Second, the persistent threats by Taliban commanders and the frequent Taliban attacks on aid workers continue to limit the outreach of development programs, especially outside the periphery of secure city centers like Kabul and Jalalabad. Third, there are growing concerns that the limited government funds have not always been used in the best possible way. Due in part to limited human capital in Afghanistan, aid absorption by the local population was constrained, and hence the funds were often spent on national projects run by foreign contractors rather than delivered directly through participatory community programs (Ghani and Lockhart 2008). Finally, drought gripped the heavily agricultural economy, becoming more intense toward the end of the 1990s and stretching into the early years of the next decade. These problems contributed to two discouraging trends.7 One was a surge of illegal activities centered around poppy farming and the narcotics trade, both of which have thrived since 2001, even in communities that had no previous history of poppy cultivation.8 Illegal opium revenues were estimated to reach nearly $3 billion in 2005, an amount equivalent to half of the legal economy of Afghanistan (UNODC 2005). The other trend was a new wave of internal migration, a rural exodus that has altered the social texture and economic geography of the country. The control of remote regions by armed groups and illegitimate rulers, usually aided by the drug economy, continues to deepen rural poverty traps.