Hope does not erase scepticism

I was enjoying the pleasures of Benghazi ten days ago when the conference on Afghanistan adopted the Tokyo Mutual Accountability Framework.   This is an admirable effort to lay out specific goals and mutual commitments for the Afghan government and the international community for the next three to five years or so, and in some cases longer.  In exchange for the commitments therein, the international community pledged $16 billion.

The framework is a step in the right direction.  Unlike most assistance programs, it explicitly combines governance and economic development objectives.  It emphasizes Afghan priorities and indigenous mechanisms.  It includes explicit milestones (“indicators”).  It tries to be quantitative, a virtue in principle but often difficult in practice.

The New York Times claims

…foreign governments will assure Afghanistan a steady stream of financing in exchange for stronger anticorruption measures and the establishment of the rule of law. Up to 20 percent of the money would depend on the government meeting governance standards…

They may know better than I do, but I see no such clear commitment in the framework.  Nor do I see the kind of measurable governance standards that would be meaningful in determining whether the government has really met the standards:  for example, a commitment to move Afghanistan out of the basement of Transparency International’s corruption perception index (180 out of 182, just above Somalia and North Korea).

There is provision for monitoring and followup, but ensconced in an existing bureaucratic mechanism well under the control of donors.  This is self-monitoring, not independent evaluation.  Donors find it exceedingly difficult to withhold funds–once projects begin, there is a substantial donor interest in seeing them completed.  Even if they haven’t begun, donors are rightly loathe to undermine their perhaps incorruptible interlocutors because of malfeasance in some other part of the Afghan government.  This kind of conditionality is exceedingly difficult to administer.

The big problem with the framework is not within but outside.  Everything depends on the economic, political and security context.  Money is fleeing Afghanistan.  Its politics are corrupt and venomous.  Even if enemy initiated attacks are down, Taliban insurgents still dominate key areas and operate from safe havens inside Pakistan.  The question is whether any plan for foreign assistance can be effective in this context, much less one undertaken in the midst of a drawdown of American and other forces.

President Obama has chosen a stately pace for the American drawdown of combat forces, which will extend to the end of 2014.  Even then, substantial numbers of American troops will remain in Afghanistan for support and training purposes.  For the past 10 years, the State Department and USAID have failed to mount the kind of effort that would provide a modicum of confidence that the Afghan state and society will reach 2015 in decent shape.  I hope the new framework will turn things around, but I have to remain sceptical.