WORLD BRIDGE BLOG

The big news today in Washington circles is the announcement of President Obama’s new strategy for Afghanistan and Pakistan. He revealed significant increases in military and civilian personnel in Afghanistan, as well as higher levels of assistance for both countries. There’s bound to be disagreements over whether this is the appropriate course of action, but Obama is undeniably making the region a top priority of his tenure.

These new policies have a high price tag (the proposed Kerry-Lugar bill alone would increase economic assistance to Pakistan by $1.5 billion a year), and the U.S. government does not have a good track record of managing multi-billion dollar development programs in the region (or other programs for that matter). As Refugees International argued in our field report last December, the lack of resources is not the problem, but rather how the money is spent. A key criterion is to channel aid money towards projects based on real needs, and not political objectives. For example, more resources should be provided to assist internally displaced people in both Afghanistan and Pakistan.

As Oxfam reminds us in a timely report on development in Afghanistan released today, “effective development…strengthens U.S. standing abroad,” and “[w]hen short-term political and security concerns drive the U.S. foreign aid agenda… they undermine U.S. national interests in the long term.”

President Obama’s strategy is bold in its scale, but even he acknowledged that increase in resources alone is not the answer. Afghanistan and Pakistan are two of the largest recipients of foreign aid, and the U.S. will need its investment to be more effective. That means reviewing aid structures at field level, such as provincial reconstruction teams; but it also means overhauling U.S. national aid institutions to tackle poverty effectively.

This is a tall order. In setting out bold objectives for Afghanistan and Pakistan, President Obama might also usher in changes back here in Washington, DC.