Winning Hearts and Minds? - Tufts - Tufts University

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EXECUTIVE SUMMARYPolitical and security objectives have alwaysinfluenced U.S. foreign assistance policies andpriorities. Since 9/11, however, development aidfor countries like Afghanistan, Iraq, and Pakistanhas increasingly and explicitly been militarizedand subsumed into the national security agenda.In the U.S. as well as in other western nations,the re-structuring of aid programs to reflect theprevailing foreign policy agenda of confrontingglobal terrorism has had a major impact ondevelopment strategies, priorities, and structures.The widely held assumption in military andforeign policy circles that development assistanceis an important “soft power” tool to win consentfor the presence of foreign troops in potentiallyhostile areas, and to promote stabilization andsecurity objectives, assumes a relationshipbetween poverty and insecurity that is shared bymany in the development and humanitariancommunity.The assumption that aid projects improvesecurity has had a number of implications for theU.S. and other western donors, including: 1) asharp increase in development assistance; 2) anincreasing percentage of assistance programmedbased on strategic security considerations ratherthan on the basis of poverty and need; and, 3) amuch greater role for the military or combinedcivil-military teams in activities that weretraditionally the preserve of development andhumanitarian organizations. At the same time,civilian agencies, including non-governmentalorganizations, have also been increasinglyenlisted in aid and development projects thathave explicit stabilization objectives.Given how widespread the assumption is, andgiven its major impact on aid andcounterinsurgency policies, there is littleempirical evidence that supports the assumptionthat reconstruction assistance is an effective toolto “win hearts and minds,” and improve securityor stabilization in counterinsurgency contexts.To help address this lack of evidence, theFeinstein International Center (FIC) at TuftsUniversity conducted a comparative study inAfghanistan and the Horn of Africa to examinethe effectiveness of aid projects in promotingsecurity objectives in stabilization andcounterinsurgency contexts.This paper presents a summary of the findingsfrom the Afghanistan study. Research wasconducted in five provinces, three in the southand east (Helmand, Paktia, and Uruzgan) whichwere considered insecure and two in the north(Balkh and Faryab) which were consideredrelatively secure, as well as in Kabul city.Through interviews and focus group discussionswith a range of respondents in key institutionsand in communities, views were elicited on thedrivers of insecurity, characteristics of aidprojects and aid implementers (including themilitary), and effects of aid projects on thepopularity of aid actors and on security.Drivers of insecurityThe study first tried to understand the drivers ofinsecurity in the five provinces in order to beable to assess whether aid projects wereaddressing them. The main reported drivers ofconflict or insecurity were poor governance,corruption, and predatory officials; ethnic, tribal,or factional conflict; poverty and unemployment;behavior of foreign forces (including civiliancasualties, night raids, and disrespect for Afghanculture); competition for scarce resources (e.g.,water, land); criminality and narcotics (andcounter-narcotics); ideology or religiousextremism; and, the geopolitical policies ofPakistan and other regional neighbors. Many ofthese factors are complex, intertwined, andoverlapping, so it was difficult to isolate thestrength and influences of each. Respondentsgave notably different weight to the variousfactors in the different provinces. In the southernand eastern provinces, poor governance andtribal and factional conflicts were given moreweight, while in the northern provinces povertyand unemployment were given more weight. Inthe south and east, the actions of theinternational military were reported to be animportant source of insecurity, whereas in thenorth international military forces weregenerally seen as more of a source of security. Acommon theme that cut across many thematic2Feinstein International Center
and geographical areas was that of injustice,including the perceived injustice that a fewcorrupt officials and powerbrokers werebenefiting disproportionally from internationalassistance at the expense of the majority ofAfghans. Insurgents were described as adept attaking advantage of the opportunities offered bycommunities’ grievances and perceptions ofinjustice.Perceptions of aid projectsThe study looked at whether and how aidprojects addressed the drivers of insecurityidentified by respondents and/or were effective atwinning hearts and minds. The research foundthat development projects, rather than generatinggood will and positive perceptions, wereconsistently described negatively by Afghans.Responses suggested that not only were projectsnot winning people over to the government side,but perceptions of the misuse and abuse of aidresources were in many cases fueling thegrowing distrust of the government, creatingenemies, or at least generating skepticismregarding the role of the government and aidagencies. The chief complaints were that projectswere insufficient, both in terms of quantity andof quality; unevenly distributed geographically,politically, and socially; and, above all, associatedwith extensive corruption, especially those thatinvolved multiple levels of subcontracting.Communities did provide positive views on theNational Solidarity Program (NSP), somesignificant and highly visible infrastructureprojects, and long-serving aid agencies that hadestablished relationships with communities.Stabilizing and destabilizing effects of aidWhile the environments in the five provincesdiffered, a number of consistent observationsemerged concerning the effectiveness of aidprojects in promoting short- and long-termstabilization objectives. First, in some areas aidprojects seemed to have had some short-termpositive security effects at a tactical level,including reported intelligence gathering gainsand some limited force protection benefits forinternational forces. In some cases aid projectsalso helped to facilitate creating relationships, inpart by providing a “platform” or context tolegitimize interaction between international andlocal actors who would otherwise find it difficultto meet. However, despite these limited tacticalbenefits, there was little concrete evidence in anyof the five provinces that aid projects werehaving more strategic level stabilization orsecurity benefits such as winning populationsaway from insurgents, legitimizing thegovernment, or reducing levels of violentconflict.The research actually found more evidence ofthe destabilizing rather than the stabilizingeffects of aid, especially in insecure areas wherethe pressures to spend large amounts of moneyquickly were greatest. The most destabilizingaspect of the war-aid economy was in fuelingmassive corruption that served to delegitimizethe government. Other destabilizing effectsincluded: generating competition and conflictover aid resources, often along factional, tribal orethnic lines; creating perverse incentives tomaintain an insecure environment, as was thecase with security contractors who were reportedto be “creating a problem to solve a problem”;fueling conflicts between communities overlocations of roads and the hiring of laborers; and,causing resentment by reinforcing existinginequalities and further strengthening dominantgroups, often allied with political leaders andregional strongmen, at the expense of others.The research found that while the drivers ofinsecurity and conflict in Afghanistan are variedand complex, the root causes are often politicalin nature, especially in terms of competition forpower and resources between and among ethnic,tribal, and factional groups. Internationalstabilization projects, however, tended to laymore emphasis on socio-economic rather thanpolitical drivers of conflict, and thereforeprimarily focused on addressing issues such asunemployment, illiteracy, lack of social services,and inadequate infrastructure such as roads. As aresult, aid projects were often not addressing themain sources of conflict, and in some cases fueledconflict by distributing resources that rivalgroups then fought over.Winning Hearts and Minds? Examining the Relationship between Aid and Security in Afghanistan 3
Page 2 and 3: ©2011 Feinstein International Cent
Page 4 and 5: ContentsAcknowledgementsGlossary of
Page 6 and 7: MAPMap credit: Hans C. Ege Wenger,
Page 8 and 9: Acronyms and abbreviationsADFANAANP
Page 12 and 13: Conclusions and recommendationsThe
Page 14 and 15: oversight is more feasible, and les
Page 16 and 17: 1. IntroductionU.S. military on pat
Page 18 and 19: After presenting the study methodol
Page 20 and 21: Photo by Shirine Bakhat-PontISAF pa
Page 22 and 23: Figure 1Source: Special Inspector G
Page 24 and 25: of stability operations asa core U.
Page 26 and 27: The need to develop interagency par
Page 28 and 29: 3. Aid and security in AfghanistanN
Page 30 and 31: BOX 1: Provincial Reconstruction Te
Page 32 and 33: Photo courtesy Australian Governmen
Page 34 and 35: the government was now in the drive
Page 36 and 37: the government while in the meantim
Page 38 and 39: merit; flagrant and extensive abuse
Page 40 and 41: and benefited at the expense of the
Page 42 and 43: having extensive caches of weapons.
Page 44 and 45: doubt this pragmatism about engagin
Page 46 and 47: Box 3 continued from previous pagee
Page 48 and 49: Photo by Paul FishsteinGraves and h
Page 50 and 51: While respondents’ expressed perc
Page 52 and 53: Photo by Paul FishsteinCash for wor
Page 54 and 55: ole of PRT interpreters, the existe
Page 56 and 57: Poor project design and outcomes we
Page 58 and 59: human nature often meant concern ab
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Photo by Paul FishsteinSign for Nat
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6. The stabilizing and destabilizin
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DOD photo by Fred W. Baker IIIU.S.
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insurgency is less so. While the ma
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6.2 Subverted by insurgentsAnother
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DOD photo by Fred W. Baker IIITruck
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underserved areas to create insecur
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polling executed since 2008, it fou
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or conflict over land and water wer
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programs in legitimizing (or delegi
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Annex A. Research MethodologyThe ob
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The original plan had been to gathe
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that in the Afghan context the qual
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BibliographyAikins, Matthieu. 2011.
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International Security Assistance F
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U.S. Department of Defense. 2010. T
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