True Development

I have so much more respect for aid workers in Afghanistan after reading about how conscientiously this author has thought through the fundamental principles of her work. She evinces a great deal of concern for innocent civilians, genuine humanitarianism, and communities that have been affected by post 9/11 conflict. She talks about the challenge of doing unfettered work in a place where the armed forces calls the shots and often infringes on what is known as humanitarian space. She upholds the principle of neutrality in these types of conflicts and has clearly spoken with aid workers who are risking their lives to deliver assistance to those who most desperately need it. She makes me want to go out and do something decent for somebody, and not least to track down aid agencies that are working across the globe and don't have the luxuries of government funding for donations.

Through the NSP and the broader reconstruction
efforts, the NGOs, including those
with substantial private funds, have become
reliant on funding from contracts linked to
the Development Budget. Recent research,
commissioned by ACBAR (Pounds 2006) in
response to a campaign against the NGOs,
played out in the media and driven by elements
within the government, estimates that in
the 2005–06 fi nancial year, 1,384 NGOs received
between $400–450 million in grants
and contracts, including contracts from big
US companies funded by USAID and multilateral
institutions – for example, 60 per cent
($42 million) of the United Nations High
Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) budget
was disbursed through the NGOs. Of the
$796 million spent on human capital projects,
under which most NGO activities fall, $200
million was handled by the NGOs. Under the
remaining programmes in the development
budget, 40 per cent ($50 million) was handled
by the NGOs. The research also suggests
that 80 per cent ($100 million) of education
expenditure was disbursed through the NGOs.
This kind of evidence confi rms the perception
expressed by one NGO that ‘NGOs have
actually become contracting agents for services
that should be provided by government. That
role is increasingly overshadowing our poverty
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eradication and taking a strong stance on
poverty in Afghanistan’ (NGO Respondent).
Understandably, the Afghan government’s
strong perception is that not enough of external
aid money goes through them, thus, reducing
their ownership over the development process.
Ironically, it seems that the Government of
Afghanistan is now using a recently constituted
NGO law and the re-registration process,
initially supported and pressed for by
the NGOs, to impede the NGOs whom they
clearly perceive as getting too big a share of
the aid ‘pie’ and having too much infl uence
over the reconstruction process. The NGOs
have complained about a lack of consistency
in applying the re-registration process. Under
the new law, aid workers but not contractors,
are to be subject to new tax rules and the
NGOs report delays in releasing funds and
bureaucratic shenanigans by ministries in
their dealings with them. The NGOs argue
that government constrains the operating environment
through these behaviours:
What’s clear to me is that there is not
very much humanitarian space here at the
moment because the government is putting
up so many rules and restrictions on the way
that NGOs function…if they are wanting
to control NGOs then they’re reducing
humanitarian space... (NGO Respondent)
6 Are we all ‘mosisas’3 now?
Post-9/11 interventions in Afghanistan are
characterized by the contracting of all aspects
of security to a number of very large, mainly
American, British, Australian and South
African private security companies and reconstruction,
including education and health, to
private contractors, primarily large US corporations,
many with close links to the Bush
administration. The international community
has donated US$ 10 billion through these
channels, which are overshadowed by scandal,
mismanagement and corruption charges
related to the awards process, the quality
and value of work and lack of monitoring and
oversight (Fariba, 2006). Fariba (2006) claims
they have contributed to the distortion of local
markets; negatively impacted livelihoods and
power relations; built useless facilities; and left
little that is sustainable or self-suffi cient.
Engaged in NGO-like activities, these
actors have had a detrimental effect on the perception
of the NGOs. A number of the NGOs
interviewed felt that they have been confused
with these contractors, who add to the more
general confusion between the various foreign
actors currently reconstructing Afghanistan:
‘People don’t distinguish between NGOs,
donors, the UN and so forth, every organization
is a ‘mosisa’, that is, ‘an organization giving service’
(UN Respondent).
The local resentment and tension generated
by the extravagant lifestyles, large
houses, expensive cars and huge pay awards
of international, privately contracted staff, in
comparison to local employees, has contributed
to thefts of NGO equipment and
monies, ransacking of NGO offi ces and even
kidnappings of aid workers who are confused
with contract workers. To help avoid this confusion,
many NGOs have adopted a low profi
le, maintained simple lifestyles and resorted
to use of downmarket vehicles. The impact
of operating under such circumstances has
contributed to increased levels of insecurity and
the result has been to drive the NGOs away
from close contact with communities, making
it more diffi cult to counter the confusion and
rebuild trust. As one interviewee noted: ‘If
NGOs have a bad image and rumours spread
about you then people can’t differentiate
between you and others – that impacts on your
neutrality. Without a field presence you can’t
counter it’ (UN Respondent).
Nevertheless, at the same time as acknowledging
this situation, most NGOs interviewed
maintained that where the NGOs have been
working with communities for some time,
beneficiaries are clear about who is and who
is not an NGO.

The post-9/11 regime change intervention in
Afghanistan and the subsequent reconstruction
strategies such as the NSP, in which relief
and development objectives have been collapsed,
illustrate the new international policy
framework, described by Duffi eld (2001),
Macrae (2004) and others, within which international
policy is defi ned and implemented.
Fox (2001) warned of the risks posed by this
new humanitarianism – loss of neutrality of
aid workers and as a result, their access to
victims; loss of independence from Western
governments; and the emergence of a hierarchy
of victims – are all evident in post-9/11
Afghanistan.
In implementing the NSP, the NGOs
operating in Afghanistan are legitimizing
and promoting one type of regime change
over another. The war on terror’s ‘with us or
against us’ mentality means that the NGOs,
having bought into the partisan project, fi nd
themselves on the side of powerful actors
who, having turned into belligerents (at
least temporarily), rather than underpinning
humanitarian space as charged in IHL, constrain
it. When USAID and the Afghan
government make it clear that the NGOs
ought not to negotiate access to victims with
any party considered to be an enemy of the
state or of international terrorism, nor provide
aid where it might encourage communities to
support enemies of the state or international
terrorism (and by implication enemies of the
US and other Western powers), they constrain
traditional humanitarianism.
The diffi culty the NGOs face when humanitarian
relief is merged with development and a
security agenda is that the ideology of development
is not the same as the ideology of relief.
The latter is based on the need to provide a
solution in the here and now and to safeguard
vital needs without necessarily considering
what will happen. The former is a global moral
engagement (Ufford and Giri, 2003) which
sets a purposeful, meaningful direction for the
whole of humanity.
Ironically, some might say hypocritically,
in post-9/11 interventions when relief has
become absorbed into development, it is to
the humanitarian principle of neutrality that
the NGOs turn for legitimacy. However, the
danger for the NGOs, as can now be seen in
Afghanistan is that there may be no way back
from the neutrality lost through explicitly
endorsing regime change. If the endeavour
fails and they cannot distance themselves
from the sentiment that the ‘war on terror’ is
nothing more than the ‘defence of Western
interests as the basis of world security and
on the proclamation of the superiority of
Western values over other kinds of states
and regime’ (Remacle, 2004: 61), they risk
not just moving closer to the target group, as
in Afghanistan, but becoming it. While most
NGOs interviewed for this study admit to
being used as instruments of foreign policy, few
acknowledged the role NGOs have themselves
played in eroding humanitarian principles.
Few, if any, have grappled in meaningful ways
with the challenges and dilemmas posed by
new humanitarianism to their humanitarian
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Progress in Development Studies 9, 1 (2009) pp. 15–36
principles and the long-term implications of this
for the nature and role of their organizations.
8 What does aid funding really buy?
The fi nancial structure of the aid system has
been critical in merging relief and development
and shaping the coherence agenda (Macrae,
2004). Under new humanitarianism, aid is
more politically defi ned and in subtler ways
than previously. This is illustrated by the way
in which donors in Afghanistan are making
funds available for development activities but
not humanitarian activities, when clearly there
is an ongoing and worsening humanitarian situation
in large swaths of the country. Defi ning
the post-9/11 intervention as being at the
development phase is politically important to
deliver a success story to voting populations,
and help sell a US-led invasion on the promise
of creating a prosperous, peaceful, rights-based
democratic Afghanistan.
In Afghanistan, we are seeing the effects
of securitized aid and the ways in which it can
exacerbate the differences between the NGOs
and contribute to them arguing amongst
themselves, constantly being on the defensive
and less focussed on the victims who they are
mandated to serve. Some NGOs refused to
accept the NSP funding on the basis that it
compromises the principle of independence
and makes them direct implementers of
Western foreign policy, which in the current
context may endanger aid workers’ lives.
Others interviewed for this study have developed
arguments that seem to allow them to
accept NSP without having to acknowledge it
compromises their independence. They offer
two rationalizations: NSP is development
money, development is inherently political, so
no need for humanitarian principles which apply
only in humanitarian crises; and by maintaining
some balance between donor funding and
other ‘own’ or publicly raised and hence, untied
funds, they maintain independence from their
donor’s foreign policy objectives.

9 Military might and PRTs
‘British soldiers are here, today they get the
order to build, tomorrow they get the order
to shoot’ (Key Informant). This comment
captures the fundamental paradox of mixing
arms and aid. To dismiss PRTs simply as a
new version of an old phenomenon;4 a minor
player in terms of personnel (between 50–300
personnel); coverage (mid-2006, in 23 out of
34 provinces); and a conduit for funds (3 per
cent of aid funds and 10 per cent of USAID
fi nance5), as some interviewees did, misses the
evolution CIMIC has undergone in the post-
Cold War period and its metamorphosis into
a tool of strategic importance in international
regime change interventions in Afghanistan
post-9/11. Allowing them to take the policy
centre-stage underplays the way in which
both humanitarian and now development
aid have become militarized in the post-9/11
environment.
However, their effectiveness as a policy
tool remains in question. When the focus of
the ‘war on terror’ shifted to Iraq in 2003,
PRTs appeared a logical, cost-effective answer
to a post-conflict scenario that demanded
interrelated actors and responses. The PRTs
were left inadequately resourced, inexperienced
in nation building and with a constantly
changing and arguably confused mandate.
This allowed lots of the marginal players –
Pakistan, China, India, Iran, Russia – to play a
side game of geo-politics in Afghanistan. The
results can be witnessed in the ongoing and
growing humanitarian and confl ict situation in
Afghanistan today, with knock-on effects on
NGOs and aid delivery.
The pressure, highlighted by several interviewees,
for the NGOs to go where PRTs are
locating, indicates the way in which aid can
become subject to donor funding priorities
and in this case, military decisions. However,
it is also important to remember the PRTs are
not the only military presence in Afghanistan.
Becoming a full partner to the humanitarian
endeavour in Afghanistan has moved the
military right into the heart of governance
and development, with serious implications for
where, when and to whom aid gets delivered
and on what principles.
The security agenda dominates not
only through the PRTs but also through the
ongoing counterinsurgency campaign alongside
a counter-narcotics campaign and an
unconventional peacekeeping reconstruction
and governance mission involving a number of
foreign militaries. This wider military campaign
also has effects on the ability of the NGOs to
operate on the basis of humanitarian principles
and in some cases, to operate at all because it
blurs the boundaries between military actors
trying to take on differing roles, which in
turn causes confusion between militaries engaged
in NGO-type activities and the NGOs
themselves. Either way, the securitization
of aid has a damaging effect on the role of
the NGOs as impartial, neutral, independent
humanitarians.

10 A game of words
In the Afghanistan context, different stakeholders
took the same concepts and expropriated
them for their own interests. For
example, the Dziedzic and Seidl (2005)
study exposes the very different perspectives
taken by the military and the NGOs on the
PRT process. Some NGOs interviewed for
this study took different perspectives on
the application of humanitarian principles,
depending on whether they defi ned activities
as humanitarian or development. Likewise, the
military interviewees insisted they are not doing
humanitarian work but ‘development’ work
but not defi ned as the long-term sustainable,
process-oriented endeavour understood by
NGOs. This is an important point because
playing with terms, labels and defi nitions can
have direct practical and political outcomes and
can be confi gured in the service of particular
ideologies.
Arguing that it is not appropriate to speak
about humanitarian work in Afghanistan
because not many actors are engaged in strictly
humanitarian activities is absurd in a country
with an ongoing and intensifying insurgency
and an appalling positioning on human development
indicators. But it does fit with the
donors’ political defi nitions of humanitarian
and development aid and the confl ation of
humanitarian and development objectives in
the ‘aid induced pacifi cation’ strategy adopted
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Progress in Development Studies 9, 1 (2009) pp. 15–36
by the international community. It allows
the NGOs to avoid confronting the thorny
subject of their application and interpretation
of humanitarian principles and the failure
to address the aid needs of many of the most
vulnerable communities. It suggests they
are seeking to fi nd their own comfort zone
in the uncomfortable space of constricted
humanitarianism.
Likewise, the military interviewees insist
they are not doing humanitarian work but
‘development’ work, defi ned not as the longterm
sustainable, process-oriented endeavour
understood by NGOs but as anything that
positively impacts the community. This allows
them to counter the criticisms they face for
blurring the lines between humanitarian and
military actors and at the same time, present
themselves as doing something constructive,
positive and helpful for the poor people of
Afghanistan because that is what development
is perceived as by wider audiences. They see
no contradiction or hypocrisy in achieving military
aims of security and stability dressed up
as NGO-type activities and use concepts and
terms from the humanitarian lexicon to help
them feel comfortable about doing so.
V Factors and actors
The actors and factors constraining humanitarian
space in post-9/11 Afghanistan are
depicted diagrammatically in Figure 3. Geopolitical
factors, namely, neighbouring countries
and other regional actors with commercial,
resource and political interests indirectly affect
the operating environment for the NGOs in
ways that constrain humanitarian space. There
is little that the NGOs can do to ‘push back’ the
pressures of such forces. At the international
policy level, the coherence agenda in which aid
is politicized, developmentalized and securitized
continues to directly affect the operating
environment for the NGOs, also in ways that
constrain humanitarian space. It will continue
to do so as the major donors shift funding
from relief to development and push what
Stockton (2002) has called an ‘aid induced
pacification’ strategy. The phenomenon of
‘mosisas’ has contributed to reducing NGO
legitimacy with an impact on respect for
humanitarian principles. However, the single
most obvious constraint on humanitarian space
in Afghanistan is the lack of security.
The military, particularly in the form of
PRTs, continues to contract rather than help
expand humanitarian space. Anti-government
forces directly constrain the ability to reach
communities in need. The entry of new actors,
primarily commercial contractors, have, in
the Afghanistan context, contributed to a
loss of respect for humanitarian principles.

They are often confused with the NGOs
and their behaviours negatively impact on the
perception of the NGOs as impartial, neutral,
independent and pro-poor actors. Other
actors, both the government and the UN,
charged under IHL with enabling, supporting
and protecting humanitarian action, appear
in the Afghanistan context either unable or
unwilling to do so.

Stockton (2002) has called an ‘aid induced
pacification’ strategy. The phenomenon of
‘mosisas’ has contributed to reducing NGO
legitimacy with an impact on respect for
humanitarian principles. However, the single
most obvious constraint on humanitarian space
in Afghanistan is the lack of security.
The military, particularly in the form of
PRTs, continues to contract rather than help
expand humanitarian space. Anti-government
forces directly constrain the ability to reach
communities in need. The entry of new actors,
primarily commercial contractors, have, in
the Afghanistan context, contributed to a
loss of respect for humanitarian principles.
Increasingly, the NGOs must answer why they
are legitimate participants in policy processes. It
is important that local populations understand
who and what the NGOs are about. The
Afghan experience suggests that this needs to
be based on an ethical framework if the NGOs
are to maximize their ability to deliver aid based
on need, maintain the trust of communities
and negotiate access to victims. Leader (2000)
argues that any such framework must be an
explicit part of decision-making for all agencies
if institutional interest is not to dominate and
that managers need to be held accountable for
implementing the principles. However, before
the NGOs can adequately define themselves,
they must make progress on old debates about
accountability, transparency, the influence
of funding on their agendas and the more
intractable issue of appropriate principles. It
is interesting but worrying that the British
Overseas NGOs for Development, NGO
Futures Programme launch paper (Lister, 2004)
barely touches on the principles debate.
Lesson 3 Recognize the importance of local
staff and use their expertise
Human resource capacities have been a serious
constraint for most actors in Afghanistan and
the problems associated with the UN and bigger
agencies ‘poaching’ staff from local agencies
and governments is well known. At the same
time, there is a tendency in the aftermath of
34 Playing with principles in an era of securitized aid
Progress in Development Studies 9, 1 (2009) pp. 15–36
humanitarian crises for NGOs to rapidly expand
their programmes, often without much
planning, and for local and long serving aid
workers to be bypassed by the appointment of
expatriate staff who staff in post for relatively
short periods. This is short sighted, generates
resentment and ignores the knowledge, insight
and commitment of local staff, who are more
likely than expatriates to pay the price of
conflict.
Lesson 4 Re-focus efforts on infl uencing the
military
As the NGOs become more dependent on donor
funds and if they wrap themselves around
regime change legitimization, they lose the
ability to speak with authority against the policies
and practices of Western powers. The
NGOs in Afghanistan have learnt the hard
way that, when trying to infl uence the military,
it is necessary to focus advocacy efforts on
those who are in a position to make policy
decisions and they are not necessarily the
military commanders on the ground. A better
understanding of how military structures
operate, who the key players are and how
military doctrine is shaped would place the
NGOs in a stronger position to challenge the
changing role of the military in the post-9/11
era, as would fi nding a common position and
speaking with one mind.
Lesson 5 Always make the victims the focus
Ultimately, without the trust of those who
are most in need of their services and without
the ability to access them, the NGOs, as
presently understood, are redundant. Development
policy, practice and aid modalities make
aid based on meeting needs less possible than
previously. When the NGOs are caught up in
trying to agree with common positions, defend
their legitimacy, secure funds, engage with
new actors, and protect their organizational
interests and investments, the danger is they
make decisions and expend energies without
prioritizing victims or accountability to them.
Keeping focussed on their mandate and the
victims of confl ict and poverty will help ensure
that the NGOs do not put organizational and
selfish interests over the delivery of aid based
on need.