Today Afghanistan is going through a democratic process; it has relatively growing economy, functional media, civil society, thousands of running educational institutes, women in offices and in the parliament and an upright army. These achievements must not be neglected, although the country faces severe challenges like lowest security, massive corruption, drug trafficking, unemployment etc. Development in Afghanistan has been possible through support from international community. But Afghanistan has reached a point where the international community has planned to diminish its military and non-military roles here.
No significant progress is in place albeit there have been international efforts to make Afghanistan’s economy stand on its own feet, improve the living standard of people and create more job opportunities. The Afghan economy continues to largely rely on foreign aids. When we talk about the international community’s withdrawal from Afghanistan, we predict –keeping in view our past and current experience – that security will deteriorate. But we are forgetting one important point and that is the negative impact on our economy that will be left behind by reduction of international engagement in Afghanistan.
Reduction of foreign aids to Afghanistan will affect its economy. Already the economy is failing to create adequate job opportunities and Afghans have to travel abroad at the risk losing their lives to access better job opportunities. Once the Afghanistan economy reverses, more people will go unemployed.
Persistence of the problem of unemployment in the country is doing much to widen the gap between people and the government. Among the several problems given birth by joblessness, three of them seem to be very concerning.
One: It is firmly believed that desperate youths join the insurgents groups who promise them attractive rewards. This can be conceived a major reason for soaring number of insurgents and insecurity graph in Afghanistan. Two: People giving up hope after continuous failure to get a job start getting addicted to drugs. The number of drug addicts in the country has crossed the figure of 1.5 million. This figure includes teenagers and women. Three: Afghans, at the risk of their lives, travel to other countries of the world. In this way the work force of Afghanistan is utilized by other countries of the world while the Afghanistan itself is in dire need of reconstruction and development works.
Job opportunities for Afghan might shrink further. Currently thousands of Afghans work for foreign companies, NGOs, military forces and other international organizations. Who will employ these people once the West pulls out its troops and civilians from Afghanistan?
The new government would need to understand this and work out plans to create more job opportunities for the Afghans by establishing more factories, enhancing agricultural and mining activities and launching new projects in provinces that can improve the economic and social conditions the of local people.