The post-Taliban Afghanistan is a colorful gallery of achievements, failures, mistakes and blunders. From the international community to the government of Afghanistan every single entity within this large set-up has had its own share of mistakes and blunders as well as achievements. A grave mistake committed in Afghanistan, and for that matter across all other developing and post-conflict countries, has been the flow of humanitarian dollars that bypass local economies and straight go back to the same countries where from they came.
According to a study conducted by the Peace Dividend Trust in Afghanistan, only 36% of the billions of dollars in developmental assistance issued by donors have entered the Afghan economy. In a survey of various international donors in Afghanistan, foreign, private-sector contractors have been channeled more than half of the development funds. The share of local, Afghan contractors has been very limited (less than 5%) especially in the U.S.-funded sector.
In other sectors, such as the U.N.-funded sector, the share of Afghan and local contractors slightly increases. However, Afghan companies, contractors and suppliers are the least preferred with the absolute majority of funds and contracts going to foreign private contractors. This is so while, today, strengthening local economies through incoming foreign aid and bypassing foreign contractors is slowly finding its rightful place as a priority to be addressed by the international community while reconstructing the post-conflict countries.
Modern commerce and trade in Afghanistan is a post-Taliban phenomenon. It has been only in recent years that an increasing number of Afghan firms and companies are emerging which use modern ways of communication, leverage information technology and lock their companies into modern notions of E-commerce and E-business.
In recent years, a distinct class of Afghan businessmen has emerged who have a new entrepreneurial spirit and are determined to cast aside the old and traditional and embrace the new and the modern. What is so far painfully missing has been exactly this: the international community engaged in Afghanistan has actually taken no serious effort to nurture and assist this new class of Afghan entrepreneurs who hold the promise of turning a new page in Afghanistan's economic scene.
In 2001 and 2002 and right before the start of the international community's new engagement in Afghanistan, it was necessary that appropriate strategies and policies be taken to mentor, nurture and grow a new class of Afghan entrepreneurs who could establish new businesses and absorb a much greater share of the aid pie that was on its way.
Educating and promoting entrepreneurship should have been a very important component of aid and assistance to Afghanistan. The potential of billions of dollars of foreign aid as well tens of billions in military-related spending should have been leveraged to developing a sound infrastructure of local, Afghan entrepreneurship. The aim should have been to leverage this vast pool of available resources to promote modern entrepreneurship in Afghanistan.
Promoting modern entrepreneurship in Afghanistan continues to be a vastly neglected area while it holds the key to unleashing the potential of countless Afghans who have the talent to build viable businesses and create employment but lack the resources and the technical know-how to either build businesses from scratch or expand their existing businesses.
It is extremely important to pay due attention to this very important sector especially in the lead-up to 2014 when it would be up to Afghans themselves to sustain the economy through domestic resources. First, a new class of Afghan entrepreneurs and businessmen should be able to absorb a much larger share of the money that is spent in Afghanistan and secondly, they should be able to help build a strong foundation for a strong private sector in the post-2014 Afghanistan.
What is encouraging is that Afghanistan of today has this emerging class of promising entrepreneurs who are fast familiarizing themselves with the modern ways of doing business, trade and commerce. This new class of entrepreneurs is coming up with new and radical business proposals and models.
They are determined to start their entrepreneurial projects even at the face of all the adversities that Afghanistan of today puts before them. Most of the time, the burdensome and corrupt government comes in the way of doing what an entrepreneur needs to develop and grow his business project. After all, for a country that has chosen a private-sector led model for organizing its national economy, developing a sound infrastructure of vibrant entrepreneurs is an absolute necessity.
The plight of refugees
Recently, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees in Afghanistan announced that its ten-year old policies in relation to repatriation of refugees from Pakistan and Iran have been flawed and predicated on a set of wrong assumptions. This is so while a decade has passed by and millions of Afghan refugees have found their ways back into Afghanistan and what has met them been only unemployment and poverty.
It is really unfortunate to see the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees mission in Afghanistan admitting to its own failure and proclaiming that the majority of its own policies and their outcome, after a decade, have now been proved as wrong. The UNHCR policies, over the past one decade, have been based on this assumption that increasing and available opportunities within Afghanistan would help the repatriating Afghans find employment and housing.
The reality has been that most of these repatriating Afghans have found it very difficult and impossible to fit into the new, post-war Afghanistan, and given their poor financial standing, an absolute majority of them have been unable to create employment for themselves when finding employment elsewhere is not possible.
The UNHCR has all along been pushing for repatriation of refugees without ever taking responsibility for the post-arrival situation of these desperate people. Taking note of the prevailing conditions and ground realities in Afghanistan and attuning formal policies in accordance with them would now be too late for hundreds of thousands of returnees who are caught in the middle with no way to go ahead.