Some of our main findings are:
The life has come back to normal in most of the Afghanistan. Street and bazaars in major cities are hustling with men and women busy doing their daily business. Reconstruction work is underway. Law and order situation has improved beyond imagination.
Prospects of permanent peace and a good environment for developmental activities are bright because the Afghan war lords were responsible for the ethnic tension in Afghanistan, whereas the Taliban came as a third and neutral option for the suffering people. As a result, they are acceptable to the majority of Afghans and among themselves they have no ill feelings among the different ethnic groups who for one reason or another got exploited by the warlords.
Government departments responsible for the development of the country have been weakened due to migration of staff and plunder of the available resources. Any development without strengthening and building the capacity of these departments will bear little fruit.
Social sector activities have been suspended due to lack of resources. Electricity has been restored and work on water supply and telephone facilities is underway. Similarly, education has been started at the university level to some extent for boys. Girl’s education in medical sciences has also resumed. The present government is not against women education. It, however, wants women education to be conducted within the frame of Islamic way of life. Such education needs a lot of resources, as they have to construct and provide separate facilities to girls students.
Fifty-two international and 194 local NGOs have been registered in Afghanistan for rehabilitation and development. But the scale of their work is small and community participation is on ad hoc basis. No efforts have been made for the establishment of sustainable community organisations in the villages.
Few NGOs are working in the field of rural development, but most of their work is with the individual community members. Even if they establish an organisation, it remains united till the completion of the project.
As a trend, all the past assistance and most of the present assistance by the donors is in the form of handouts, that have created a dependency syndrome in the communities, and they are in need of some programme that can teach them on how to attain self-reliance and effectively utilise their own resources.
The question for the world community is how far a nation will be allowed to sink out of the circle of our common humanity. Afghanistan stands as a rebuke to every humanitarian, religious, or political ideal that has paraded through that land in the past decades. Countries that paid thousands of millions for the war today can hardly find a million for reconstruction.
The Taliban have given representation to all the regions in their government, which after meeting with different ministries under the leadership of different regional leaders, brought us to a simple conclusion that this is a kind of broad-based representative government that seems to be the most appropriate for dealing with the nation of a war torn country.
Our observations is that Taliban have successfully provided the public the much needed peaceful environment to carryout other developmental activities, its now up to the donors and development agencies to take an initiative.
The government officials stressed that the Taliban are supporting development activities of the NGOs in the country. They were, however, too disappointed with the propaganda campaign of some of the NGOs that do not want to, or cannot undertake, development activities in Afghanistan’s tough field conditions – the most serious of which is to deal with the dilapidated roads, which impedes mobility and communication.
We were assured by the Deputy Chief of Protocol Department in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of all kinds of assistance should we decide to commence a Rural Support Programme in Afghanistan.
According to the Minister of Planning, the government has no objection to the commencing of a Rural Support Programme in Afghanistan, except that it has to be registered according to the established procedures before commencing any operation. The government is also willing to allow its representatives on the Board of Directors of the Afghan Rural Support Programme representing the Government of Afghanistan.
The Directorate of Rural Development also expressed its willingness to work with ARSP.
General perception in the communities was that NGOs would come and tell them what to do or the government would do everything for them. In waiting for the handouts, they have no individual or collective thinking for developing their individual or communal life.
Regarding women development the Taliban officials told us that the government has no objection to the education and skill development of women in agriculture or any other sector. Women trainers in NRM and other relevant fields are allowed to come and train Afghan women in rural areas without any problem at all.
Similarly, NGOs are allowed to open home based schools for girls, provided they are not co-education and they provide pick and drop facility to the students.
There is a good working relationship among NGOs and between the government and non-government sectors. The NGOs supported the Taliban government in the restoration of electricity, while the Norwegian funded NGOs are working on the rehabilitation of drinking water supply schemes in Kabul City.
NGOs can also recruit female staff on permission from the government, like Norwegian Programme Office – Rural Rehabilitation Association of Afghanistan (NPO/RRAA) has at 30-70% female-male staffing ratio in Afghanistan.
Fear: Although the factional fighting in the rest of the country has been subsided to a great extent but the continued conflict in the North is a matter of concern as its further spread to the rest of the regions might harm any future development activities undertaken by NGOs and donor agencies.