Since the ouster of Taliban from power in 2001, Afghanistan is reconstructing and developing with the support from international community. Nevertheless, challenges remain solid that do not allow smooth progress of the country.

The government of Afghanistan fails to execute its planned development projects. The execution rate of development rate is still below 40%. This has caused the development budget to be merely transferred from one fiscal year and to the other, without substantial work done. Hundreds of development projects have either remained incomplete or merely as plans on papers. Reasons for this are low capacity in government entities, insecurity and poor budget planning.

At the same time, the Provincial Reconstruction Teams (PRTs) that have been responsible for only a fraction of the $89 billion the United States has spent over the last decade to rebuild Afghanistan, suffered from the same poor planning and inadequate oversight that characterized the broader U.S. reconstruction effort. With four of the PRT’s now shut down, and seven others due to be retired by summer’s end, Afghan officials are beginning to confront the challenge of picking up where U.S. aspirations left off.

Additionally, as insecurity is expected to further escalate, development work in Afghanistan is expected to face further slowdown. Taliban, the main insurgent group, pose grave threats to implementation of development projects. They have been involved in abducting and slaughtering people working on projects such as of construction of highways, bridges, schools or hospitals. They do not spare even the laborers. Last week, although it is Ramadan and this month is considered the month of peace and harmony and the Taliban claim to be its followers, eight Afghan workers, who worked at a U.S. military base in Logar province, were shot dead by the Taliban. The workers were shot dead on Thursday morning while they were on their way to the base.

Transfer of full security responsibilities from NATO to Afghan security forces has completed while most of the international troops are to withdraw by the end of the next year. With that, concerns over providing satisfactory security to the people and infrastructural projects have been increasing.

Insurgent’s strength may grow further, if proper measures are not taken by the Afghan government and its western backers. The little development in Afghanistan’s various sectors is at the risk of being lost as future stability of this country remains highly uncertain. For Afghanistan to develop, it needs to reconstruct and improve its economic infrastructures. For that it needs remove the biggest constraint of insecurity or else it would take generations for Afghanistan to come out of the grave condition it is facing.