Igniting 2008

First and most importantly, it is hereby announced that DJ Mariz-e-Muhabbat (Saurabh) and DJ Ilaaj (me) will be throwing the mightiest Bollywood party yet with the help of our apprentices, Shararat (Khatidja) and Safed Bijli (Nathan). On 24 January, prepare for all of Kabul's snow to melt and for the winter to dissipate into a heatwave.

As for the lesser important start of the new year on 1 January, I managed to bring that in in proper style in India. This included Shareena's wedding in Bangalore, new years in Delhi, and an unexpected detour to Dubai and Bombay.

Of course all this goodness nearly didn't happen thanks to a snowstorm here. My Indian Airlines flight was cancelled due to poor visibility (you have to feel sorry for the people on the flight, who took off from Delhi, circled around Kabul for two hours, and then had to return!). Well, a few of us were determined to get out and managed to do so with the help of Pamir Airlines. Indian assured us they would honour our tickets from Dubai if we could get there, so me and a few others took them up on it. Of course we had to buy new tickets to Dubai, and Pamir was accepting cash only, so I narrowly escaped thanks to a then complete stranger (Dinesh Sah) loaning me $110 so I could by the ticket. So in the course of the day waiting around at Kabul I got to make some friends and network! Along with Dinesh and a few other development types, Ron Susskind, an American author, was stranded along with us. I also learned that the Kabul airport restaurant is not to be scoffed at (it is easily found by following a series of post-it notes) and that they have a most delicious karahi gosht there.

Finally we got on the flight, which took off in a hurry before night fell and ascended at a good 50-degree angle to pop out over the clouds. The rest of the flight was smooth and I had the honour of sitting next to someone who had never been out of Afghanistan or on a plane before. It was truly amazing to see his first impression of the outside world, from the snaking and well-lit Iranian expressways below us to the platforms in the Persian Gulf to the blazing light of the Emirati coastline. In Dubai I had a mini-vacation in the terminal which is a first-rate shopping mall and spent some of the last cash I had on a Starbucks coffee. Event the (expensive) drive from Terminal 2 to Terminal one was a treat just getting to see the clean roads and big shiny buildings and feeling the Middle East again. I hung out with my new friends at the terminal and talked my way onto a flight to Bombay (the Indian Air rep had simply written that I should go Dubai-Bombay-Bangalore on the ticket in chicken scratch--my original flight was Kabul-Delhi-Bangalore, so dealing with a state-owned monopoly has its advantages in that they can easy fudge schedules).

The rest went smoothly and I can't complain, since averting Delhi saved me the risk of getting stuck in fog. Even though I only saw Bombay on the takeoff coming out, I have to say it's one of the most amazing things I've seen. I've never seen a city so big or so dense before...the sheer amount of huge buildings and closely packed houses that fill a peninsula which juts far out into the Indian Ocean and spill out into the Maharashtrian hinterlands dwarfs Manhattan. While I generally need to do things other than go to India, I have to take up some friends on their invitation to give me a proper Bombay tour. Also, note that I'm calling it Mumbai, the city is Bombay (a Portuguese creation) and I would like to emphasise in the rudest way possible that Hindu Nationalists can all go fuck themselves! :-) When I got to Bombay, the first thing that greeted me were the headlines announcing Modi's landslide victory in Gujarat. This is depressing because it was bad enough when Modi was the genocidal leader of Gujarat who was personally responsible for thousands of deaths in the pogrom--no, now the overwhelming majority of Gujaratis are vilifying themselves by throwing their support behind Hindu nationalist terror. Did I mention Gujarat is dry? As a person of integrity I slam teetotaling every chance I get, and to Gujarat's ebullient extremist I have just one insult: you guys are worse than a bunch of American Christians and NWFP extremists combined. But then again, we can always be thankful for justice in that prohibition, conservativism, and discrimination will sink Gujarat eventually as they have slapped down everyone else who has tried them.

Enough with that rant; Bangalore was beautiful and the weather was perfect. I stayed with Martin and Priya, friends of the groom who were great and polite hosts. Shareena's wedding was great too. I spent a lot of time relaxing and eating super-hot Andhra food. The only downside was that I had to "blacklist" a former friend for extremely disappropriate behaviour (her name is Amber Sommer; because transparency and accountability are so important to me I make a point of calling people out either for good or ill--that way we learn from past mistakes.). But the fallout itself had an upside in that I wasn't pressured to go to annoying tourist traps and could focus on the real Bangalore: eating and shopping!

Delhi was also fun and mellow. I spent much of the time with Saurabh (my friend from Kabul), and Aasim who just returned from a trip to Pakistan. The three of us ended up at Malchamarg Market of all places on new year's eve, at a Chinese restaurant. I also did yet more shopping, buying pretty much every major piece of music made between the summer and now as well as a tonne of classic movies (Mother India, Amar-Akbar-Anthony, Muqaddar ka Sikandar, Hey Kabuliwala, etc.). We also hit all the best restaurants of Delhi, like Karim's and Andhra Bhavan. The only thing I still have to cross off the Delhi list is Dum Pukht, which specialises in Lakhnavi food (yes, Nihari!) and has a remarkably particularistic menu. That's a big relief in Delhi, where even the best Mughlai establishments feed the need to give you a selection of Mughlai, South Indian, Continental, and Chinese--come on people, just do what you do best! I personally find that there are very few people who can do such diverse cooking styles well, so unless the establishment is damn good, most of that menu will just be dead weight. Of course I also got some drinks in at 4S, the dive bar in Defence Colony which I so often call home.

The flight back to Kabul was smooth and on-time, and since I've returned so has everyone else. A few friends had breaks far more dramatic than me and have also returned home in good spirits and ready to start the new year. Now all we need is for this weather to warm up...

امید و سپاسگذاری

Things in Kabul have returned to a steady, pleasant, dependable pace. I accomplish my first major task here at Altai, which involved a presentation on construction materials markets in Afghanistan for the Capacity Development Programme of USAID. It was the smallest group of people I ever presented to! Not to say that that stopped me from talking more than my share. I can say now that I truly like my workplace and the people too. Before my next project starts tomorrow, I've had some time to catch up on much needed sleep and finally get settled for the first time in month. I finally moved into my new room in Guesthouse L'Atmo, which, like its name suggests is right across from L'Atmosphere restaurant. And it's conveniently on the same street as my office, which greatly simplifies my commute. I picked up my old stuff (that had not gone to India with me) from Lorenzo's place. Most important of this was a few books I've been wanting to read which include another anthropological work by Michael Edwards about honour and politics on the Afghan-Pak border and an English translation of Shahnameh (which I'm beginning to think would be pure laziness to read).

As my plan for world domination proceeds apace though, I've had some other additions and insights which have enriched my life in the last month. First I have to give props to Arzu and Mitra, my respective Aussie and Kiwi friends. Mitra's definitely proven herself to be one of the coolest people I know and alway down to sit down and humour me by listening to all most hopes and dreams concerning suitors of the opposite sex.

The other interesting occurrence has hit me from halfway across the world, and reaffirms my notion that there is more order in the world than we think. Some friends from DC might remember Jerusha. Every few months or so I've gotten to exchange a few emails with her, and before then in DC she was easily amongst the coolest people I knew, and someone with whom I've always felt a strong connection. Last month a few interesting things happened: I started hanging out with her friend Alison who is in Kabul, and I went to Mazar, where one of the most prominent local family's shared Jerusha's last name and therefore appeared on every other billboard. Just a few days later we ended up getting in touch and staying in touch much more regularly. Since, I've had the enormous pleasure of better getting to know someone who is unlike anyone else I know and a true example and inspiration. On top of all the great friends I have here, in India, in Europe, and in the States some people really stand out, giving you something to look forward to at the end of the day and an ear-to-ear grin. It reminds me how lucky I really am.

Nothing warms my heart and puts me in a good mood like strong personal connections, which leads me to more general (some would say goober-ish) thoughts on life and relationships. For the moment I'm enjoying my job, my life, and the moment.

Trip to Mazar-e Sharif

This week for work I got the opportunity of going to Mazar-e Sharif. The best part, however, was that I got to go by road. For those of you who don’t know or haven’t heard of the place, let me explain a little bit about the city. Firstly, Mazar has a lot of historical significance. Its name means “noble shrine (mazar = “place of pilgrimage” and sharif = “noble”). Furthermore it is situated near and is the modern successor of the ancient city of Balkh. Balkh was a key strategic goal in conquests dating back to the Achaemenids and Alexander. It was also the city in which Zoroaster came to reside and propagate his new religion with the blessings of the local ruler of the time and the birthplace of the sufi poet Rumi, who eventually came to reside in Konya in Anatolia. The focal point of Mazar is of course the shrine at its centre reputed to be the final resting place of the Caliph Ali. The association with Ali suggests that Ali was in fact pretty awesome in that he managed to get around not just in life but in death as well. There are at least three other places contending to be Ali’s final resting place, and the most important of these is Najaf in Iraq (which is acknowledged by most Shi’is and is coincidentally local near where Ali establish his government in Kufa and where he was assassinated). In accordance with the old archaeological proverb “once a sacred place, always a sacred place”, the holiness of the shrine almost certainly goes back to far before Islam. It is very likely that the site originally marked the resting place of Zoroaster or an important site in the development of his faith, and for any one of the preceding reasons it is still regarded as holy by Zoroastrians.

More recently Mazar was made famous by the Taliban who took the city despite fierce resistance in 1998. Prior to the Taliban Mazar and its surroundings had been ruled by Rashid Dostum, a local Uzbek (speaking a Turkish dialect) warlord who had been in control since during the Soviet occupation when he was allied with the Soviets and their puppet regime under Najîbollâh in Kabul. Even though the Soviets withdrew in 1989, Dostum’s support helped prop up Najîbollâh until 1992. When Dostum withdrew from the government the regime quickly collapsed precipitating the mujahidin takeover and Afghanistan decent into total anarchy.

Mazar lies in the northern (şomâlî) plains near the border with Uzbekistan and the Amu River, about 400 km north of Kabul. It is separated both culturally and geographically from Kabul by the Hindu Kush mountain range. These mountain have traditionally formed a strong barrier in that they average between 4,000 and 5,000 meters in height. While Kabul faces the Indian subcontinent (the Kabul River drains into the Indus system), Mazar has always had closer ties to Samarqand and Bukhara and it very much a Persian city and part of the Persian heartland. Its climate is also much milder than Kabul’s given its elevation of 380m as opposed to Kabul’s 1,800.

For us the journey took about nine hours on the almost fully reconstructed Salang road. Leaving from Kabul the road ascends quite quickly from the plains above Çârîkâr to its highest point at the Salang tunnel which is at 3,800 m (that’s over 12,000 ft. for you Americans). After that you emerge very far above the tree line and follow and never-ending course of switchbacks until the road comfortably establishes itself in a lush river valley.

I can only imagine that this road and the people unfortunate enough to live along it saw a lot of action during the Soviet occupation, given that this was the main transport road between the USSR and Kabul. The terrain also provides numerous hideouts for potential attackers, who could easily attack Soviet equipment which must have been a sitting duck on the narrow path upon which it could travel. This is witnessed by innumerable shells of tanks, APCs, and parts thereof which litter the entirety of the road. It speaks to the Soviets’ helplessness, demoralisation, or both, that they did not or could not collect their damaged military hardware after attacks. It’s quite amusing see many former APC shells stacked atop and alongside one another to form embankments and tank turrets being used as flower planters.

The architecture and agriculture in view along the way was also quite fascinating. At lower elevations the rivers are surrounded by rice paddies, which are well watered when fed by the rising waters in spring during the melt. In mid summer and fall these field seem to by used for grass and forage for livestock. At higher elevations and in more rocky terrain, the grains are replaced by orchards of fruit and nut trees. These were really beautiful being that we travelled the road in October and their leave were all coloured in bright yellow and red (and this set against the barren mountains in the background). Everywhere a tremendous amount of effort had gone into terracing and irrigation. The terraces reached their greatest complexity for the orchards, many of which were cut out of slopes of up to about seventy degrees. Even on flatter ground every tree had its own little channel that supplies it and runs into a little well immediately around the tree’s base. Furthermore, the each tree is also based on a small rise to provide adequate drainage. In many cases individual trees were supported by complex masonry which exceeds that of any human dwelling. The efficacy of these techniques is apparent when one compares maintained trees to ones which have been abandoned or gone feral. These individuals appeared to be in a much sorrier straight, plus it’s interesting to note how quickly the terraces degrade when not maintain, with tree quickly breaking free and falling below to the river. Some points relating to harvesting: The tractors on hand were all Soviet or FSU in origin, with Belarus’ eponymous tractor making quite a strong showing. Given that the fields were all too small for tractors or used for crops not suitable for mechanical harvesting, the tractors seemed to be used entirely for hauling things such as blocks. Hay is threshed with a scythe (I didn’t see this in action but it was apparent from the patterns in the harvest fields) and left to dry in piles on individuals’ rooftops. This is depending giving that the weather is predictably rain-free until November.

Given the scarcity of arable land in mountain valleys, the towns usually don’t try to compete. They are all clustered on the sides of mountains and stacked on top of one another like the pueblo style in the US. It would have been really interesting to walk around one of these villages and check it out at closer range. All the houses are interconnected by interwoven networks of staircases and paths and interspersed at irregular intervals by individual gardens and fruit trees (which means that there must be an interesting water supply and drainage system at hand to keep all of the watered and then to keep your [rooftop] garden from collapsing into your neighbour’s living room). I was paying special attention to building materials given my current project at Altai, and two things were apparent to me; local materials are amply used to good effect and the local architecture is both practical and dignified. It really makes me disgusted with the compound-style houses favoured by the Afghan middle classes, which are designed at fortresses to protect familial honour from threats which either never have or will exist or actually originate from within such compounds. The traditional architecture consist of baked mud-bricks or fitted and cut stone (more stone at higher elevation since erosion is happening at a faster rate). On top of this they usually have a covering a dried mud-plaster mix. Nothing looked sloppy, with fixtures such as windows carefully fitted at neat angles and carved out of local wood.

We stopped in a town called Douşî for lunch, which was awesome. The menu at this restaurant consisted of lamb kabab, yahni, and dâşi, which we in the West recognise at digi. The digi consists of meat and gravy, with the meat being whatever they have (we ate at this place on the way back too; the first time they had veal, the next they had lamb) and the gravy also consisting of whatever they have. It’s all served in something like Kashmiri style with bread, lots of raw onions, and some masalas which you can add, one being based on dried red chillies and the other of dried green chillies.

The city of Mazar itself is not overly impressive. It’s not that large and not exciting. It is laid out on a rectangular grid with broad avenues, all perfectly centred on the shrine. This sobriety is reflected in the people, who by their own admission are much more focused on religion than having a good time. The city shuts down at sunset and restaurants are not open past eight. Although apparently young people compensate by going buck-wild in Uzbekistan on the weekends. The city of Termez right on the Uzbek side of the border has a disproportionate amount of clubs all disproportionately stocked with hooched out Afghan youth.

We got to eat in a few family homes too. One night we went to the house of Najib, who runs Altai’s Mazar office and the next to the house of Rafi’s family (Rafi being are consultant on this project who comes from Mazar). Our hosts were gracious and the few great, but I was deeply troubled by the intense immorality of a place where you get to meet the male family members but none of the women. Even though they were both very progressive families (one of the families made a great show of serving us beer), my overall impression was one of sadness, incompleteness, and un-Islamic-ness.

Of course no trip would be complete without its dramatic bits. Amongst our group we had the company of one extremely arrogant young man from Jalalabad who managed to embarrass the rest of us at almost every conceivable opportunity. This guy was pretty much a bad caricature of the embarrassment to humanity that is fundamentalism. First off he made a big show of refusing to go to the local franchise of Delhi Darbar because it was Hindu-owned, an action which is forbidden by almost any interpretation of Islam for a huge number of reasons. He also confronted our hosts for dinner on one occasion to inform them of how un-Islamic they were. Out of curiosity on one occasion I engaged him in a discussion of classical Sunni jurisprudence and found that, not surprisingly, he knew nothing (not even heard of classics such at Tabari’s History, Shafi’i’s Risala, or Bukhari’s collection of Hadiths) and gleaned most of his opinions from one Indian Deobandi leader and an intense obsession with originality (which itself fits into the psychology of the Deobandi movement). Anyway it was sad to see someone struggling with the ideas that the rest of humanity has confronted over fifty years ago—basically it reminded me of talking to an American Christian!

The trip back was a bit more intense in that the change in altitude comes as a much greater shock, as does the change in temperature. At one point we also stopped to take a piss and, as we were getting out of the vehicle, realised we didn’t know if the area had been demined. This was solved easily enough by finding a group of sheep. The logic here was that the sheep would have set off the mines had there been any. And it seems to have been right, judging by the lack of explosions. We also stopped at a few point to pick up fruit from the roadside—chiefly pomegranates.

The Nuances of Afghan Office Etiquette

One of the highlights of my current job is getting to talk to people. In doing market research on construction materials I regularly find myself in the offices of five to ten heads of companies in a given day. This means I have had ample opportunity to compare and contrast different different settings in which Afghans conduct business. After a while, I couldn't help viewing these things through an anthropological lens as well.

The basic schematic of the Afghan office is, like many throughout the world, a projection of power. There are typical two rooms. The first will be less lavishly furnished and be occupied by an average of five people at any given moment; a mix of servants and sundry employees. The second room will be the lair of the boss himself. It will contain an enormous desk and the rest of the space will be taken up by obscene plush couches arranged in a salon setting. The meeting will also entail some sort of serving of food. This schematic allows numerous waits for exhibiting and mediating power, so here's how.

The number of people in the anteroom. This shows the power or status of the person you are about to meet. In fact most of them seem to have nothing to do but hang out (there are usually different servants who will bring you your tea later on). The people in the anteroom therefore, not just show how many people the boss can afford to hire, but also that he can afford to have them sitting around not doing much. The more powerful the boss, the more people and the more leisure on hand.

The main reception room. You and the boss will not be the only people in this room. Very often other people have been waiting since before you arrived to conduct their business. They may even have been waiting through multiple previous visitors. Unfortunately (for Afghan society) I never am made to wait, owing to the fact that Western visitors accord status, and those like myself who speak English are at the top of even that pecking order. Being made to wait and seeing the other guests that are brought in will impress upon the other individual the importance of the person they are waiting to see. If the person you are waiting to see cannot speak English themselves, they will frequently produce a foreign-educated son as a measure of social advancement, usually with the excuse of acting as a translator, which is pretty thin when everyone speaks Farsi. The desk is often little used and mostly for show, a fact often compounded by the impractical arrangement of unnecessary electronic gadgets upon it.

The food offered and the method of its offering. Tea can be served either before you sit down or offered just when it becomes clear that you are about to leave. The food will be non-existent or the usual assortment of nuts and raisins or include some specialties as souhan and gaz. Some people, as a result of class or pretension, go for the cornucopia effect, presenting you with a table covered in things like Pringles, Dorritos, and LU cookies. Some also dispense with tea and offer you coffee (perceived as a core indicator of things Western; Westerners are often perceived to dislike tea), soda, or even Red Bull.

The use of Western artefacts. This is something of a cross-cutting theme. The amount of Western artefacts on hand is inversely proportional with the amount of modernisation of the given boss. This extends from clothing to food to decor. The person educated or brought up the West will great you behind a well used desk in an office tastefully decorated with Afghan objets d'art while wearing a kurta-pijama. On the other extreme, we once spoke with the son of the boss, who had been left in charge. This individual, whilst making an aweful attempt at a Tehrani accent (which is prestigious thanks to the cultural power of Iran and the massive Farsi-language entertainment industry based in Los Angeles which is also given voice in the accent of Tehran), was wear probably one of the most amazing get-ups off all time, consisting of: acid-washed, flared, and incoherently embroidered jeans (Rajastani embroider on one pant, mickey mouse on the other); a collared shirt which had massively oversized cuffs, cufflinks the size of bones, and patterned with oversized neon-hued pieces of cheesecake (the collar was necessarily popped), and to top it off, a leather life-preserver-style vest that was sekwinzed.


It's not just the boss's personality or pretension that factor into this but also those of the clientele. Whatever the individuals preferences, there clients or potential clients will also look for certain signals. Many people have a regal salon-style set up, but will instead take you too a modern and efficient office when given the chance. Another axis is professionalism. The more professional the company, the more familiar its offices will look to someone from the West. People who sat behind a desk where they were visibly at work knew how much they would sell in a given interval, the cost of their inputs, and be full of potential strategies for growth. The biggest divide overall is between businesses that just consist of trading and transporting goods and those that are trying to establish an actual corporate structure, which is necessary to institutionalise the benefits of economic growth.

Life on Planet Altai

Going into my third week at Altai, I think I really like this place. It's a good mix of being professional and informal. The work is well divided so I don't have to focus on much beyond the job which I am supposed to do.

My job right now consists of finishing up some market research on construction materials in the place of someone who got sick just before I started. In a sense this is training for a large market survey which I am going to head up for Nestle starting in November. As little as I know about construction materials, the work is really interesting as it involves me going around Kabul and getting to talk to all different sorts of people, plus also getting to know the Afghan economy close up.

Due to my lack of technical know-how, I've been paired up with an Afghan engineer (Aref, long based in Germany) who helps me fill in the gaps in my interviews. While necessary for this project, in general I hope I won't have to take assistants in the future. It makes the interviews more difficult because people don't expect me to speak Farsi when I have an Afghan assistant. It is also problematic because Aref speaks only German and Farsi, and my technical German is crap. He is used to thinking of German as the language of technology where I accord that status to Farsi. As a result, rather than asking a direct question in Farsi, I have to discuss with Aref in German and then have him translate into Farsi. Yes, my German is improving quickly. It also amusing because I have spent so many years devaluing German as just another old European language and now have to treat it with some respect. But Farsi is better, way better.

The living arrangements are okay. Currently I'm in the largest guesthouse out in Taimani. Let's face it, these are dorms. It's great fun. I rarely get to sleep on time and instead spend time drinking Ovaltine with Mitra and Arzu. We have continental breakfast laid out for us every morning and people clean our rooms. I'm not complaining; I've been roughing it for the last year and I'm quite happy for the perks! My living situation will soon get much better as well. Four expats are moving out so Altai held a room auction. I was the only one who placed a bid, so I got my pick :-) My new room will be in the guesthouse directly across from L'Atmosphere (a French restaurant with readily available alcohol which serves as a second office for the Altai staff) and only 50m away from the office. The room is right next to the bathroom and kitchen (yes, at moment my room is unattached, so I have to go outside to get to the bathroom, common room, or kitchen, which will suck come winter) and also has a desk and really soft mattress. I might also spring $120 for a diesel heater. One year of lighting the bokhari (wood stove) by myself has been quite enough, plus with a wood stove it will be cold in the morning unless you keep waking up in the middle of the night.

Back in Kabul

Well, after four months in India I am finally back in Kabul. The last week in Delhi was fun if also a bit hectic. I stayed with my friend Kaushik in Mayur Vihar and ran around doing errands. On top of this, a few others were getting ready to leave--Mohit Sinha is going to Bangalore to work at a think-tank and Aashish Mishra, who's off to do a PhD at LSE. On top of this 4S, the infamous cheap bar of Defence Colony will be shutting its doors on the 20th for a one-month renovation. True, it's not the end, but one must worry that renovation will entail making it less ghetto and dive-y, which after all, was the whole point.

The flight to Kabul was relatively normal, by general standards, not those of a typical flight to Kabul. No goats, neem trees, or firearms in sight, nor was anyone carrying much more than twice the allowed amount of baggage with them. Indian served complimentary beer on the flight (I was the only non-taker), and no-one felt compelled to fast, even though the journey is under two hours. The terminal reconstruction is quite evident in Kabul and it's gotten much nicer at the airport.

Having been gone for four month I noticed a lot of changes. For one, things appear to be looking up. There's even more construction than before and a lot of small businesses are being repaired as well. On the hand, people are bitching about increases in the price of flour and oil.

It's nice to be back, the weather is perfect, about 25-30C with no humidity. I've made it a habit to sit out at L'Atmosphere, where no one is bothered by my using the internet, even though I'm not ordering anything due to the fast. In summer, it's an open-air restaurant (any of you who have been to San Diego, think Cafe 976) with lots of fig, pomegranate, and cherry trees, as well as grapes and roses too. I'm a bit annoyed by the constant repetition of the soundtrack from My Best Friend's Wedding (the English version of Mere Yaar Ki Shadi Hai), but oh well.

I found, with Nathan's help, a nice guesthouse behind the Kabul City Centre shopping mall. It's actually a private house run by a nice and mellow Australian guy, and is next to an awesome Lebanese restaurant. Beyond finishing my survey of perceptions of NGO-sector corruption in Afghanistan, I'm trying to rustle up a new job but networking with everyone imaginable. It's much easier to find work hanging out here than going to DC or Cali, just because communication tends to be so poor between Afghanistan and wherever the donors are. Plus you just get a lot of experience in anything you do here.

So, basically, the job search begins, the partying continues!

The Gilded Tissue Box: Trying to distribute aid to Afghanistan

Right now I'm wrapping up my big report for IWA and getting ready to go back to Kabul, and on to the next job. The concept for the report is 'perceptions of NGO integrity in Afghanistan'. It's actually two reports, based on two questionnaires (one for the population as a whole and one for NGO professionals and political elites) with participants in twenty provinces. What we've found is this: There are major areas of Afghanistan who are confused about what NGOs are and there are lots of non-Afghans who are also equally confused. Now, at this point it's important to underline that people in highly educated societies tend not to know what NGOs are. Yes, but these same people tend also to live in functioning states which provide public goods. Afghans have a whole array of competing would-be public goods providers, amongst which the dominant one by far is not the Afghan state per se (please no one say they need a citation for this). These are my thoughts about the significance of this work.

Before we can move on to the Afghans, we need to look at the situation from the point of the NGO community itself. First and foremost there is a general failure to be practical--this means a relevant combination of theoretical and specific, not one or the other. The NGO community would do well to recognise the realities defined in political science and economics (which is often disdained in itself). You'll observe my point as I continue, the grand scales bears heavily on the specific analyses. Here are some ground rules for understanding the situation in Afghanistan:

• States are geographically delimited public goods monopolies. As such, they try to build, maintain, and enforce monopolies over the production, distribution, and consumption of public goods, such as the rule of law, justice, freedoms, etc. The state is also the principle agent in the state system, which, thanks to a huge body of treaties and common law, has been growing since at least 1648. There global political arena is composed of states, bodies composed of states, organisations which operate under the auspices of the state, and those who define themselves in response to states and the state system (the last two need not be mutually exclusive).
• Political actors are any person, group, organisation, body, multilateral institution, reptile, or platypus which has an effect on the any political economy or ecology. Yep, every conscious being is pretty much a political actor.
• Non-governmental organisations (NGOs) are just that. Your local sewing circle is any NGO, as is McDonalds, Bearing Point, Louis Berger, Integrity Watch Afghanistan, Counterpart International, and the Foundation to Protect Swedish Underwear Models. For the purpose if this spiel, I'm talking about NGOs as organisations that distribute aid.
• While a given organisation is either part of the state or it is not, it's relation to the state could be discribed on a continuum. At one end of the continuum you have the organisation being completely inside the government, basically the Man's bitch. An example would be the Department of State in the US. At the other extreme would be an organisation that has nothing to do with the government (like the secrecy-shrouded PLF--Platypus Liberation Front; holed up in an undisclosed location). Yes, the reality is that every organisation falls somewhere in between, and there's a handy adjective for this, official. The more anything is sanctioned by anything else, the more official it is, with regards to point of reference for definition.
• Legitimacy is how much support something has. It doesn't matter what it is or how official it is.

So, in Afghanistan we have a lot of political actors, all with varying degrees of officialdom. On the official side we have the internationally recognised government of Afghanistan and bodies (militaries, embassies, development agencies) of other sovereign states. On the unofficial end we have the Taliban (boo!), warlords, clan, kin, and tribal structures. None of the above are necessarily good or bad, and all have varying degrees of legitimacy.

The state can not distribute the amount of public goods necessary for all the citizens of Afghanistan, so other organisations fill the vacuum. Some organisations are official; the Afghan government and other states acknowledging its lack of capacity open bids, sign contracts, and invite other organisations to provide [public] goods. Along with the actual provision of public goods, said organisation also often help to strength the Afghan state's ability to do so (capacity building).

Uninvited are the Talban and other traditional power structures. The Taliban want control over the state and hence the monopoly, warlords want the added prestige and wealth associated with the ability to distribute public goods, and maybe a monopoly over an area as well. Tribal or clan institutions may or may not compete with the state, but given different discourses of legitimacy, traditional institutions may serve as an arbiter between the average citizen and larger actors. Actors that can best tap into and influence the discourse of legitimacy gain the most power.

Most actors lie somewhere between official and unofficial. Non-official actors such as warlords or local jirgas may be coopted into the state in exchange for improved legitimacy and interest aggregation and adjudication. NGOs also lie on this continuum. USAID is a highly official arm of the US government. It contracts out a project to an independent NGO, say, Counterpart, which then becomes a more official player in so doing. The individuals and organisations who then work with Counterpart have varying degrees of officialdom within the resulting structure. Notice that whether the NGO is for- or non-profit is of only tangential importance. Legitimacy is often misconstrued, by those within and with the NGO community to be a function the profit motive. In reality, an NGO is a business and a corporation, and it's profit status doesn't necessarily relate to its transparency, accountability, efficacy, or legitimacy.

The point of IWA's recent survey is that, while Afghans are more aware of NGOs than, say, the average American (they deal with them more), they are still quite confused. Some provinces where people rate official power structures as most influential are unlikely to ever have experienced proper governance by the national government. In other places, political actors blur together, with local government, NGOs, and warlords being identified with each other in important ways. Aid delivery must be thought out and organised, yet there is a paradox because we know that command economies don't work. This means that not only do NGOs have to coordinate, they have have to coordinate in structuring and regulating the market to increase the demand for [certain kinds of] aid and integrity in their consumption and distribution.

One of the most important points in the Paris Declaration on Aid Effectiveness is that harmonised aid is important, but it does not go so far as to recognise the necessity of adapting to market forces. Along with economic markets, there exist also ideological markets, requiring marketing and PR. The branding, marketing, and packaging of aid are as important as the product itself (of course the product also needs to be good, as the makers of US foreign policy would do well to understand). We've all made fun of the 60-odd page brand identification manual that USAID puts out, but there's a logic there.

To go beyond what the results of survey, or even what a trough of phenomenological interviews can suss out, the problems faced in the reconstruction of Afghanistan are at least as much a result of structural factors in the aid distribution regime as they are the result of specific factors in the Afghan beneficiaries. These include the problem of dual accountability, whereby aid distributes are supposed to be accountable to both their beneficiaries and their donors (who are often nation-states whose interests may conflict with those of the intended beneficiaries), and the problem of the orientation of NGOs themselves. But just as important is the notion amongst many non-profits that they are superior or more rashid than for-profits.

The tendency of non-profits to fully grasp the reality of the situation makes them overall less confident and less effective in aid distribution. Non-profits should strive to internalise the principles of integrity and accountability as deeply as they advocate them. They also need to realise that there is no magic bullet for accountability and hence to stop wringing their hands about it. The consequences are immediate. Afghans are confused over non-profits/ intentions as well as their identity, often not being aware of who is supposed to benefit or why.

The problem with accountability for non-profit NGOs is the lack of incentives. While for-profits are certainly involved in many abuses, their model theoretically creates a more efficient model for integrity. The same profit model that can cater to a baser instinct also introduces more checks and balances by which the for-profit should be more transparent and accountable, at least to its shareholders. Following the theory, a for-profit will lose money if it doesn't do the job and do it well, and furthermore it will face internal punishment if it loses out on revenue or future contracts (being unethical costs money!). In too many non-profits, this business ethnic is non-existent. No one gets fired when a product fails or doesn't get produced in a timely fashion. Donors sympathise with the non-profit NGO that can't balance its budget and don't cut off its funding right away. It is considered tolerable for a non-profit not to pay its employees (who work just as hard as employees of for-profits) well or be insolvent, whereas a for-profit would become a laughing stock for this. Most non-profits are accountable or at least genuinely try, but the non-profit model has serious flaws and strains which should be better addressed.

For the situation to change, NGOs have to grow up. (Some place are ahead--NGO discourse is much more advanced in the US and Iran than in Europe for example) In order to become truly effective, non-profits need to realise that they are just one of many political and economic actors, and that they are political and economic actors themselves. They also have to be as conversant and comfortable with economics as with the discourses of justice and public health. Non-profits also need to embrace markets, and embrace the hard game of politics with all the clever PR of Shell and Unilever. Economics is the moral science, explaining how humans satisfy their wants and needs and theirin explaining how we can help them be satisfied more often. The market for public goods in Afghanistan will be filled, the question is how we are going to structure the market.