Anti-Government Mobilization in Afghanistan 1978-2011 | AREU

Antonio Giustozzi with Niamatullah Ibrahimi
Published by the Afghanistan Research and Evaluation Unit

The authors provide an accessible analysis of the social and political factors underlying the long conflict. The purpose is to “bring together the existing literature, review it, and start a more rigorous discussion of what has been driving anti-government mobilisation in Afghanistan for over 30 years. The paper has therefore been designed to highlight existing gaps in the literature, map future research opportunities and needs, and provide an initial, although not conclusive, brief on what existing evidence suggests are the main drivers of mobilisation in the current situation.”

The key point.

“The current, post-2001 armed confrontation can be seen as the third phase of a conflagration that started in 1978. From a political analysis perspective, minimising the differences between the different phases of the conflict might seem debatable. However, when the underlying social, cultural, and political factors are analyzed, it becomes clear that the ongoing phase of the conflict cannot be understood without looking at the previous phases as well (which is not to say that the violent, recent past is a sufficient cause of the current conflict). Prolonged conflict reshapes society, often changing the reasons why a conflict is fought. The original destabilisation of the country in the 1970s created an environment in which various sectors of the population were mobilised by different political movements, each carrying out a revolution (or trying to) against its predecessors and subject to external interference. It also changed Afghan society to a fair extent and even created two new social classes with a heightened self-consciousness of their political role: the clergy and a class of military professionals (the “commanders” as they are known in Afghanistan).”

Executive Summary

The literature concerning the last 30 years of war in Afghanistan has over the last few years reached such a critical mass that it is now possible to identify structural factors in Afghan history that contributed to the various conflicts and have been its signal feature from 1978 onward. The state-building model borrowed from the neighbouring British and Tsarist empires in the late 19th century contained the seeds of later trouble, chiefly in the form of rural-urban friction that gained substantial force with the spread of modernity to rural Afghanistan starting in the 1950s. Following the Khalqi regime’s all-out assault on rural conservatism in 1978-79, this friction ignited into large-scale collective action by a variety of localised opposition groups, including political organisations, clerical networks, and Pakistani military intelligence, as well as the intelligence services of several other countries.

During the 1980s, Soviet heavy-handedness, combined with the local dynamics of violence and massive external support, intensified and entrenched the existing conflict. New social groups emerged with a vested interest in prolonging the conflict, while existing social groups were transformed by it. Communities everywhere armed themselves to protect against roaming bandits and rogue insurgents, eventually dismantling the monopolisation of violence that Amir Abdur Rahman had started to marshal from 1880 onward.

In 1992, on the eve of civil war, the national army and police, as well as the security services, were disbanded. This was a complex process, featuring factional infighting and the desire of the new mujahiddin elite to eliminate an alternative and potentially rival source of power. Armed insurgent groups eventually became semi-regular or irregular militias with little discipline and weak command and control from the political leadership. As a result, Afghanistan reverted to the pre-Abdur Rahman state of rival and semi-autonomous strongmen, with the central government having to negotiate for their allegiance.

Explanations of the Taliban’s rise usually refer to the disorder and chaos that characterized this situation as it existed in Afghanistan during 1992-94; however, the biggest challenge now is to understand how such an example of collective action could take place in a fragmented political and social context.

In 2001, the new interim government took power and inherited a heavily compromised situation. Rather than mobilising scarce human resources and reactivating as much of the state administration as possible, the government instead emphasized patronage distribution, in the process surrendering virtually all levers of central control to strongmen and warlords associated with the victorious anti-Taliban coalition. This combined with other factors to radically undercut governance, which undermined the state’s legitimacy and pushed some communities toward revolt.

The predominant social, cultural, and economic trends of the post-2001 period abetted the spread of the Taliban’s recruitment base by deepening the rural-urban divide mentioned above. The concentration of economic growth in the cities, the arrival of mass media typically rather disrespectful of the villages’ predominantly conservative social mores, and the affirmation of capitalist attitudes at the expense of established redistributionist attitudes among the wealthy classes, all contributed to the population’s polarisation. Massive levels of expenditure in Afghanistan also triggered an inflationary process, which badly harmed all those who were not direct financial beneficiaries of the intervention.

The clergy, having much to lose in the new political set-up, gradually remobilised as an opposition force. Its general expansion and prior military experience, along with the fact that many of its members had been part of a single political organisation (Harakat-i- Enqelab) during the 1980s, had all contributed to the re-emergence of a militant clerical movement in 1994, as did the jihadist indoctrination of new generations of clerics. By steadily co-opting more and more local clerical networks, the Taliban not only expanded, albeit temporarily, but also socialised newcomers into the movement, thereby creating a relatively strong sense of identity. The idea of clerical rule seems only gradually to have gained ground within the Taliban, but by 2001 it was entrenched within their ranks.

The Taliban are often depicted as relying on poverty and social marginality as spurs to the recruitment of village youth, although there is little actual evidence of that. Whatever the cause of many young Afghans joining the insurgency, mercenary motivations seem to dissipate once the Taliban have a chance to socialise and indoctrinate their new members. The behaviour of the Taliban in the battlefield suggests that mercenary aims are not a major, long-term motivating factor.

The Taliban have also been seen as a Pashtun revanchist movement, aiming to redress the imbalance that emerged in 2001 when mostly non-Pashtuns seized control of the state apparatus. In fact, there is growing evidence of the Taliban recruiting from the ethnic minorities as much as possible. While it is possible that some Taliban supporters might after 2001 have seen them as a source of Pashtun empowerment, there is little or no evidence that such considerations have played an important role in recruitment.

By contrast, there is substantial evidence that the Taliban have exploited conflicts among communities to establish their influence, if not necessarily to recruit individuals to their cause. In a number of occasions, the Taliban have also succeeded in mobilising disgruntled communities on their side, encouraging them to fight against government and foreign troops. Such community mobilisation was mostly relatively short-lived, as the communities were extremely vulnerable to the reaction of the Afghan state and the Western armies and suffered heavily in the fighting; by 2011, such mobilisation appeared to have declined.

Much has been said on the role of opium in fuelling the conflicts over the years. While it is evident that insurgents tax the drugs trade, their involvement in it is likely to have been overstated. In reality, the Taliban do not appear to attribute much importance to the drug taxes raised in southern Afghanistan and were in early 2011 shifting their military effort to other areas of the country. While narcotics revenue likely represents a solid majority of the Taliban’s own tax revenue, external support from Pakistani and Iranian sources is reportedly a significantly larger portion of their overall revenue. Similarly, since the Taliban tax any economic activity, including aid contracts and private security companies, development aid theoretically fuels the conflict as much as the narcotics trade does.

The intensification of the international military presence from 2006 onward, meant to contain the insurgency, has had the opposite effect, with greater numbers of troops eventually presiding over an acceleration of the insurgency’s expansion. In part this was due to regional powers increasing their support as a particular reaction to the growing American presence. The acceleration of the insurgency’s spread was also the result of local reactions to the presence of foreign troops.

In order to fully explain the post-2001 insurgency, a unifying factor is needed, a “driver of drivers.” The Taliban have been able to link together and integrate various causes and groups, capturing their energy and rage and directing it toward the strategic aim of expelling foreigners from the country and imposing a new political settlement. In their use of xenophobic and occasionally nationalistic recruitment arguments, the Taliban, aware of the difficulty of fully integrating communities under their own leadership into the movement, have privileged the role of individuals.

There are many weaknesses and gaps in our knowledge that should be addressed in order to confirm or reject some of the hypotheses formulated here. In particular, the Taliban’s organisational system is still poorly understood, as is their system of socialisation. Social and political dynamics such as the urban-rural divide and the impact of cash inflows after 2001 are also poorly understood. How much of the pre-war social organisation is left intact or at least functional is also far from clear. Future research would certainly benefit from a comprehensive mapping exercise.

Congressional Briefing | Afghan Civil Society Perspectives

I am thrilled to be a part of this briefing hosted by Rep. James McGovern and Rep. John Garamendi. It will be Wednesday 29 February at 2 PM. Click on the image above for details.

The screening, presentation and live discussion will be an opportunity to bring Afghan perspectives to the forefront of the conversation about crucial economic and social development issues.

It will also serve as the formal launch of the Windows and Mirrors mural exhibit that will be in Washington for the month of March. A key sponsor of the exhibit will be the Faith Roundtable on Afghanistan.

The briefing will feature a live video conference with Afghan NGO directors and filmmakers, a screening of a selection of the Afghan–made documentary shorts The Fruit of Our Labor, and a roundtable discussion with Community Supported Film, 3P Human Security, and the American Friends Service Committee.

The live video conversation and Q&A with Afghan and US participants will include: Zarah Sadat, filmmaker and Founder and Director of Open Society Organization in Afghanistan; Jamal Aram, filmmaker and Program Coordinator of Community Supported Film, Afghanistan; Michael Sheridan, Director and Founder of Community Supported Film; Peter Lems, AFSC Program Director for Education and Advocacy on Afghanistan and Iraq; Lisa Schirch, Director of 3P Human Security

Take a moment to check out The Fruit of Our Labor on their home page.

The films allow viewers to witness reality through Afghan eyes, offering a deeper understanding of Afghanistan that is crucial for mapping a peaceful and stable path forward as US and NATO troops withdraw.

The films are a collection of documentary shorts made by Afghans in a training provided by Community Supported Film in Kabul.

Windows and Mirrors DC Schedule here.

Afghanistan’s Most Vulnerable | The Poverty of War

Click on image for slideshow.

"At least 150 people in Afghanistan have died in the past month after some of the coldest weather for years." - IRIN

Afghanistan is one of the most poor, unstable and insecure countries of the world. Decades of war and military occupation by foreign powers have created one of the largest communities of displaced people in the world.

The death of so many Afghan’s highlights the tragedy of the U.S. commitment to war-fighting instead of human needs. See the most recent report by the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction.

IRIN is a service of the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs and focuses on humanitarian news and analysis.

“DUBAI, 24 February 2012 (IRIN) - At least 150 people in Afghanistan have died in the past month after some of the coldest weather for years. The deaths - mainly of those without adequate food, housing or heating in Kabul and the northern province of Badakhshan - have prompted some to ask how this can happen given that the country has received billions of dollars of aid since the Taliban regime fell in 2002.

Sediq Hassani, director of policy at the Afghanistan National Disaster Management Authority, said every possible effort had been made to stock food and other items in the most at-risk areas, but acknowledged: “We were not 100 percent successful. There were districts to which, due to bad roads, we couldn’t send food items before winter started.”

He blamed lack of investment by the government and international community in the last decade, but one UN official told IRIN the international community has failed to prioritize disaster reduction management in Afghanistan.

“The ones who died were mostly the children of internally displaced persons who live in tents and mud-huts in Kabul and those poor families in other parts of the country who can’t afford to keep their homes warm,” said Health Ministry spokesman Kargar Norughli.

“In the last few days, 35 children were killed by pneumonia in two districts of Badakhshan Province and more than 30 others by avalanches in the last few weeks,” Abdul Marouf Rasekh, a spokesperson for the governor of Badakhshan said.

“I thought everybody was dead after an avalanche hit our village,” Ghulam Yahya, 48, from Eshkashim District in Badakhshan Province, told IRIN in Faizabad, the provincial capital. “I saw one of our relatives die after being trapped in the snow for hours. Many houses were destroyed by the avalanche.”

NGO Save The Children has launched a rapid response to get help to families as more heavy snowfall is predicted for this coming week and temperatures are expected to drop as low as minus 17 degrees centigrade.

See a slideshow about how the cold weather is affecting some of the country’s most vulnerable people.”

Afghanistan: Ten Years On | Photojournalist Guy Smallman

Photojournalist Guy Smallman has been to Afghanistan four times, working independently of the NATO media system. He is the only western journalist to have visited the scene of the Granai massacre in which 147 people, including 93 children, were killed by NATO bombing.

He returned from his latest trip in January and is touring with a photo exhibit. The work documents the everyday struggles faced by ordinary Afghans from the violence of war as well as poverty, drug abuse, and unemployment. Realities that are often ignored or obscured in mainstream media coverage.

He also has a short film called “Fifteen million Afghans”.

To see the special 6 page supplement Afghanistan: 10 Years On in Peace News click here. To see more of Guy’s photographs click here.

*****

Here are more details about the speaking tour. It is organized by Quaker Peace and Social Witness and Peace News. Tomorrow they are at Friends House in London. He is joined by ex-soldier Benn Griffin.

Afghan Refugee Strategy a Big Mistake | UNHCR

In 2002 the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) embarked on an ambitious strategy to facilitate the return of Afghan refugees to their country.

Last Tuesday (December 27), Peter Nicolaus, UNHCR representative in Afghanistan described the strategy as the “biggest mistake the UNHCR ever made”.

“The head of the UN refugee programme in Afghanistan on Tuesday described its strategy in the war-wracked country since 2002 as the "biggest mistake UNHCR ever made".

Almost a quarter of the population of Afghanistan is made up of refugees returning from Pakistan and Iran. Many find themselves homeless, or living in slums under tarpaulin.

But Peter Nicolaus, UNHCR representative in Afghanistan, said the international community had failed to help returnees find a means of earning a living and therefore reintegrating into society.”

…

"This is what the donor community constantly forgets. This has been overlooked and it's still overlooked. Nobody has taken this seriously. It's a tragedy.

"We are now -- for the first time -- bringing this up in the spring conference."

An international conference with Afghanistan, Iran, Pakistan and the refugee agency is to be held in April to present the new long term strategy.

In November, The State Department Office of the Special Representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan reported that U.S. economic and humanitarian aid to Afghanistan has peaked in 2010 at $4.1 billion and would be reduced to $2.5 billion this year.

Bringing Refugees Home, the challenge ahead spells out some of the recent history.

See this link for other resources - and poems - on Afghan refugees.

Kajaki Dam and the Helmand Valley Authority

Jean MacKenzie reports about the history of the Kajaki dam project in Helmand Province. The upgrade of the dam has been billed as the linchpin of the military effort in Helmand, and key to delivering power – and of course influence – in Kandahar. It is a story of a failure.

Watershed of Waste: Afghanistan’s Kajaki Dam and USAID

It is also an update of a project with a very long history, and many previous failures. A project that was modeled in many ways on the Tennessee Valley Authority in the US .

It started in 1946 when the government of Afghanistan first “hired the largest American heavy engineering firm, Morrison Knudsen, Inc. of Boise, Idaho, to build a dam. Morrison Knudsen, builder of the Hoover Dam, the San Francisco Bay Bridge, and soon the launch complex at Cape Canaveral, specialized in symbols of the future. The firm operated all over the world, boring tunnels through the Andes in Peru, laying airfields in Turkey.”

It is a fascination story told by Nick Cullather.

He explores the way development was used in the post-colonial period to gain influence and sheds light on the chapter of Afghan history that is little know; when the U.S. and the Soviet Union sought influence in Afghanistan through development project and not armies.

From New Deal to New Frontier in Afghanistan: Modernization in a Buffer State

The goal of the project was to project power – by a central government – over areas of the country it had little control. It was to modernize the country. It was political, fueled eventually by the desire of the Monarchy to create a ‘Pastunistan’ consisting of most of Northern Pakistan that would address the uncertainty of Pashtuns after the partition of India in 1947.

The long history of US companies and U.S. aid.

The Helmand Valley project “came under American supervision in 1946 and continued until the departure of the last reclamation expert in 1979, outlasting the theories and rationales on which it was based. It was lavishly funded by U.S. foreign aid, multilateral loans, and the Afghan government, and it was the opposite of piecemeal. It was an “integrated” development scheme, with education, industry, agriculture, medicine, and marketing under a single controlling authority. Nation-building did not fail in Afghanistan for want of money, time, or imagination. In the Helmand Valley, the engines and dreams of modernization had run their full course, spooling out across the desert until they hit limits of physics, culture, and history.”

Here is how it starts.

“In May 1960, the historian Arnold Toynbee left Kandahar and drove 90 miles on freshly paved roads to Lashkar Gah, a modern planned city known locally as the New York of Afghanistan. At the confluence of the Helmand and Arghandab rivers, close against the ancient ruins of Qala Bist, Lashkar Gah’s 8,000 residents lived in suburban-style tract homes surrounded by broad lawns. The city boasted an alabaster mosque, one of the country’s best hospitals, Afghanistan’s only coeducational high school, and the headquarters of the Helmand Valley Authority, a multipurpose dam project funded by the United States. This unexpected proliferation of modernity led Toynbee to reflect on the warning of Sophocles: “the craft of his engines surpasseth his dreams.” In the area around Kandahar, traditional Afghanistan had vanished. “The domain of the Helmand Valley Authority,” he reported, “has become a piece of America inserted into the Afghan landscape. …The new world they are conjuring up out of the desert at the Helmand River’s expense is to be an America-in-Asia.”

…..

“Nothing becomes antiquated faster than symbols of the future, and it is difficult, at only fifty years remove, to envision the hold concrete dams once had on the global imagination. In the mid-20th century, the austere lines of the Hoover Dam and its radiating spans of high-tension wire inscribed federal power on the American landscape. Vladimir Lenin famously remarked that Communism was Soviet power plus electrification, an equation captured by the David Lean film Dr. Zhivago in the image of water surging, as a kind of redemption, from the spillway of an immense Soviet dam. In 1954, standing at the Bhakra- Nangal canal, Nehru described dams as the temples of modern India. “Which place can be greater than this,” he declared, “this Bhakra -Nangal, where thousands of men have worked, have shed their blood, and sweat and laid down their lives as well? …When we see big works, our stature grows with them, and our minds open out a little.”43 For Nehru, for Zahir Shah, for China today, the great blank wall of a dam was a screen on which they would project the future.”

America’s Costly War Machine | Stiglitz & Bilmes

The article below was in the Los Angeles Times yesterday. I have linked it to the graphic above that appeared in yesterdays New York Times in a piece entitled The Impoverished States of America.


America’s Costly War Machine | Stiglitz & Bilmes

Ten years into the war on terror, the U.S. has largely succeeded in its attempts to destabilize Al Qaeda and eliminate its leaders. But the cost has been enormous, and our decisions about how to finance it have profoundly damaged the U.S. economy.

Many of these costs were unnecessary. We chose to fight in Iraq and Afghanistan with a small, all-volunteer force, and we supplemented the military presence with a heavy reliance on civilian contractors. These decisions not only placed enormous strain on the troops but dramatically pushed up costs. Recent congressional investigations have shown that roughly 1 of every 4 dollars spent on wartime contracting was wasted or misspent.

To date, the United States has spent more than $2.5 trillion on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Pentagon spending spree that accompanied it and a battery of new homeland security measures instituted after Sept. 11.

How have we paid for this? Entirely through borrowing. Spending on the wars and on added security at home has accounted for more than one-quarter of the total increase in U.S. government debt since 2001. And not only did we fail to pay as we went for the wars, the George W. Bush administration also successfully pushed to cut taxes in 2001 and again in 2003, which added further to the debt. This toxic combination of lower revenues and higher spending has brought the country to its current political stalemate.

There is only one other time in U.S. history that a war was financed entirely through borrowing, without raising taxes: when the Colonies borrowed from France during the Revolutionary War.

Even if we were to leave Afghanistan and Iraq tomorrow, our war debt would continue to rise for decades. Future bills will include such things as caring for military veterans, replacing military equipment, rebuilding the armed forces and paying interest on all the money we have borrowed. And these costs won't be insignificant.

History has shown that the cost of caring for military veterans peaks decades after a conflict. Already, half of the returning troops have been treated in Veterans Administration medical centers, and more than 600,000 have qualified to receive disability compensation. At this point, the bill for future medical and disability benefits is estimated at $600 billion to $900 billion, but the number will almost surely grow as hundreds of thousands of troops still deployed abroad return home.

And it isn't just in some theoretical future that the wars will affect the nation's economy: They already have. The conditions that precipitated the financial crisis in 2008 were shaped in part by the war on terror. The invasion of Iraq and the resulting instability in the Persian Gulf were among the factors that pushed oil prices up from about $30 a barrel in 2003 to historic highs five years later, peaking at $140 a barrel in current dollars in 2008. Higher oil prices threatened to depress U.S. economic activity, prompting the Federal Reserve to lower interest rates and loosen regulations. These policies were major contributors to the housing bubble and the financial collapse that followed.

Now, the war's huge deficits are shaping the economic debate, and they could keep Congress from enacting another round of needed stimulus spending to help the country climb out of its economic malaise. Many of these war debts are likely to continue to compromise America's investments in its future for decades.

For years, the public failed to adequately question how it was possible that we could spend and borrow so freely, with so few consequences. But now the painful legacy of these decisions has become clear. Throughout the past decade, Congress routinely approved huge "emergency" appropriations to pay for the wars. This process preempted the usual scrutiny and debate that accompanies large spending bills. In part, this is because the U.S. lacks the basic accounting tools necessary for informed debate. Our future debts from the war are not listed anywhere in the federal government's budget. We don't even know for certain where the money has been spent. The Pentagon hasn't produced a clean financial audit in the 20 years since government auditing began, nor has it developed an accounting framework that would allow an assessment of the future costs of current decisions. This has almost certainly increased the overall cost of the war.

Our response to Sept. 11 has weakened both the current economy and our future economic prospects. And that legacy of economic weakness — combined with the erosion of the credibility of our military power and of our "soft power" — has undermined, rather than strengthened, our national security.

Nearly 10 years into the Afghanistan war, the violence in that country shows little sign of abating. August was the deadliest month of the war yet for U.S. troops, and there were also multiple attacks on Afghan security forces, government officials and civilians. The surge in violence comes as NATO is drawing down and handing over security control to national forces. But tens of thousands of U.S. military personnel are scheduled to remain in Afghanistan through the end of 2014.

The costs of fighting the war on terror have already been far higher than they needed to be. The U.S. should not take on even greater war debt without understanding the true costs of continuing down that path.

Linda J. Bilmes is a faculty member at Harvard University. Joseph E. Stiglitz is a professor at Columbia University and the recipient of the Nobel Prize in economics. They are coauthors of "The Three Trillion Dollar War: The True Cost of the Iraq Conflict."

The Trillion Dollar Question

Students from The Village of Arts and Humanities in Philadelphia submitted this video for the If I had a Trillion Dollars youth video contest.

The contest was framed on a simple question.

How would you invest the $1 trillion spent on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan?

You will find all the videos here.

No Shortcuts When America Moves a War

The headline in today's New York Times say’s it all. No Shortcuts When America Moves a War. In the context of the article, this phrase refers to the fact that the U.S. must move tones of material from Iraq around Iran to get to Afghanistan. It will be one of the largest movements of military equipment since World War II. In reality, the article is about the fact that no expense is spared to fight this war.

Here are some of the facts.

“The military says there are 3.1 million pieces of equipment in Iraq, from tanks to coffee makers, two-thirds of which are to leave the country. Of that, about half will go on to Afghanistan, where there are already severe strains on the system.”

“All lethal supplies — weapons, armored trucks, eight-wheeled Stryker troop carriers — come in by air to avoid attacks, but everything else goes by sea and land. The standard route from Iraq to Afghanistan is south from Baghdad and down through Kuwait, by ship through the Persian Gulf and the Strait of Hormuz to Karachi, Pakistan, then overland once again.”

“Nonlethal supplies flowing into Afghanistan include cement, lumber, blast barriers, septic tanks and rubberized matting, all to expand space at airfields and double, to 40, the number of forward operating bases in a country…”

“The Defense Logistics Agency, which provides meals for 415,000 troops, contractors and American civilians each day in both wars, shipped 1.1 million frozen hamburger patties to Afghanistan in March alone, compared with 663,000 burgers in March 2009. The agency also supplied 27 million gallons of fuel to forces in Afghanistan this month, compared with 15 million gallons a year ago.”

The most telling quote about U.S. priorities comes from General David Petraeus

Gen. David H. Petraeus of the United States Central Command, in another grand historical parallel, recently called the construction under way “the largest building boom in Afghanistan since Alexander built Kandahar,” a reference to the conqueror of Afghanistan in the fourth century B.C.

Additional Resources:

Human Rights Dimension of Poverty in Afghanistan

To see why Iran feels surrounded, here is the map from the paper.

Human Rights Dimension of Poverty in Afghanistan

Today in Kabul the United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights issued a report entitled the Human Rights Dimension of Poverty in Afghanistan.

Here is an excerpt from the press conference.

We are all aware that Afghanistan is one of the poorest countries in the world. One third of its population lives in absolute poverty. Afghanistan I think you also know has the second highest maternal mortality rate in the world. This means that 25,000 women die each year because of complications associated with giving birth. This is the highest single cause of death in Afghanistan.

Only 23 per cent of Afghans has access to safe drinking water. Only 24 per cent of the population above the age of 15 can read and write, and of course with much lower literacy rates among women and nomadic populations. According to UNICEF, 30 per cent of primary school children are working and are often the sole source of income for their families.

Poverty kills. Poverty actually kills more Afghans than those who die as a direct result of the armed conflict. Poverty deprives two-thirds of the Afghan population from living a decent and dignified life – this includes the inability to enjoy their most basic and fundamental rights, such as getting an education or having access to health services.

But who are the poor in Afghanistan and why are they poor? Statistics tend to hide the root causes of poverty. Statistics also tend to focus our attention to the consequences rather than causes of widespread impoverishment.

As elsewhere in the world, poverty is multi-dimensional and can be traced to different sources and processes. Poverty is neither accidental, nor inevitable; it is both a cause and a consequence of a massive human rights deficit. The deficit includes widespread impunity and inadequate investment in, and attention to, human rights. Patronage, corruption, impunity and over-emphasis on short-term goals rather than targeted long-term development are exacerbating a situation of dire poverty that is the condition of an overwhelming majority of Afghans.

A human rights angle offers a complementary approach to existing poverty reduction strategies. The High Commissioner’s report concludes that sustainable poverty reduction is dependent on efforts that roll back abusive power structures. Vested interests in this country frequently shape the public agenda, whether in relation to the law, policy, or the allocation of resources. The High Commissioner’s report also argues that the poor must be at the centre of decision-making processes that affect their life. The poor need to be empowered to make free and informed choices about their future; they need to be involved, in a meaningful way, in efforts geared to overcoming poverty.

To see the full transcript of the press conference click here.

Additional Resources

The Cost of War: Afghan Experiences of Conflict 1978-2009

The past three decades of war and disorder have had a devastating impact on the Afghan people. Millions have been killed, millions more have been forced to flee their homes and the country’s infrastructure and forests have all but been destroyed. The social fabric of the country is fractured and state institutions are fragile and weak.

Much has been written about the wars in Afghanistan and the basic narrative of the conflict, in one form or another, has been repeated in countless books, academic articles and news reports. But the voices of ordinary Afghans are often absent from these accounts, and yet it is the Afghan people who are most affected by the violence.

To better understand how Afghans have experienced and understand the conflict, eight nongovernmental organizations operating in Afghanistan conducted research in 14 provinces across the country. This research focused on individual experiences of the past thirty years of conflict, perceptions of the current conflict and recommendations for alleviating the violence and addressing its root causes.