Adequate Funding…For Corruption

Will Keola Thomas – Afghanistan Study Group

Professor Paul D. Miller, former director for Afghanistan on the National Security Council under Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama, has a post up at Foreign Policy taking Congress to task for failing to adequately fund and monitor reconstruction efforts in Afghanistan during the first five years of the war.

Point well-taken. Professor Miller shows that the U.S. and other international donors consistently provided Afghanistan with much less funding than was considered necessary for its  reconstruction by institutions like the U.N. and World Bank in the early years of the war. He also notes that Congress paid far too little attention to the war from 2001 to 2006, as evidenced by the small number of hearings on Afghanistan held by the Armed Services and Foreign Affairs committees in both the Senate and House during that time.

However, the years following 2006 shed at least as much light on the difficulties facing the United States’ engagement in Afghanistan as the years preceding it and they are equally illuminating of the intent behind Professor Miller’s critique. Since 2006, US funding for reconstruction activities has risen from almost $3.5 billion to $18.7 billion in the 2011 budget. Professor Miller doesn’t mention this five-fold increase in reconstruction assistance over the past five years nor does he mention that it hasn’t produced long-term, sustainable economic growth for the people of Afghanistan.

Rather, Professor Miller claims that Congress has “…decided the reconstruction strategy has failed without ever giving it the money and oversight it needed to succeed.” Actually, it’s more likely that the $119 billion budgeted to be spent this year on a country with a GNP of less than $17 billion is far too much money. As Anthony Cordesman of the Center for Strategic and International Studies has pointed out, the corruption that undermines the legitimacy of the Afghan government in the eyes of its people has its roots in the billions of dollars the US pours into a struggling economy which lacks the capacity to absorb it.

The relatively recent increase in congressional attention to the flaws in the United States’ approach to reconstruction in Afghanistan is not, as Professor Miller states, “…too little, too late.” It is not too late for Congress to provide the oversight and appropriate level of funding for a new strategy. The Afghanistan Study Group has never argued that the foundation for this strategy should rest solely on preventing “…Afghanistan from re-emerging as a terrorist safe haven though a campaign of targeted airstrikes,” as Professor Miller erroneously claims. The ASG’s five-point approach for a new strategy in Afghanistan is clearly laid out in our report which would have quickly disavowed Professor Miller of that notion had he consulted it.

Now is the time for policymakers to devise and implement a strategy that recognizes the counter-productive impact that an over-reliance on military force has on the United State’s core interests in Afghanistan and that emphasizes the necessity of a political settlement.  It is far too late, on the other hand, for Professor Miller to re-wind the clock on our current failed strategy.

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