December 17, 2001	Monday	Shawwal 1, 1422

Rigid optimists among us are adamant that the West is going to invest a colossal $6 billion to $25 billion into rebuilding Afghanistan. The assertion is that the most convenient of routes to Afghanistan is through Pakistan.

Implicit in the assertion is that we are going to get our share of the American apple pie. Afghanistan is going to need a lot of cement and a lot of steel! Good times are just around the corner, and that we are all going to laugh all the way to the bank. Here’s a billion dollar question. Where are all the billions going to come from? In the US, the National Bureau of Economic Research has declared that America is in a recession. According to the Bureau, “a recession is a significant decline in activity spread across the economy, lasting more than a few months, visible in industrial production, employment, real income, and wholesale-retail trade?”). There are now strong voices in the US Senate and the House crying out loud that by waging the air-war over Afghanistan America has already contributed its share in the new ‘war on terrorism.’ Clinton-era expectations of budget surpluses are a thing of the past. The most recent estimates released by the Office of Management and Budget projects budgetary deficits - because of the war effort and a slowing economy-lasting for several years into the future. Furthermore a recent Washington Post/ABC News Poll concluded that only 22 per cent of Americans were interested in Afghanistan after their military has achieved its objectives.

American politicians now want Japan and Germany to play their respective roles. The question is as to what economic interest would Japan or Germany have in Afghanistan. To be certain, the private sectors of both those countries are not looking at the war-torn Afghanistan as a potential investment destination. Most bilateral aid, at the same time, is bound to be in the form of food and clothing for the starving Afghans.

How about multilateral aid from the World Bank or the Asian Development Bank? To be sure, there is a wide consensus in the international donor community that any aid to Afghanistan must not be at the cost of committed or promised funding to the sub-Saharan Africa, poor Asia, AIDS programmes around the world or a hundred other deserving issues. Any multilateral aid going into Afghanistan must therefore be financed through “new” money and “new” money is awfully hard to come by. All is not lost, however. Representative Tom Lantos (Democrat-California) has recently introduced a bill in the US House of Representatives that calls for “$1.6 billion for Afghanistan over four years.” Of the $1.6 billion, a large portion is going to be allocated to a major anti-opium programme, rebuilding of the US embassy and whatever is left over would go for Afghan reconstruction.

Pakistani optimism aside, the global aid pool seldom exceeds $250 billion over an average five-year period. Afghanistan’s population being less than 1 per cent of the total potential aid recipient pool the Afghans, therefore, cannot reasonably expect to get more than $500 million in any given year. Even if the West gets together all that Afghanistan is going to get in the foreseeable future is humanitarian-based aid plus some funding to create a rudimentary institutional capacity that can run and manage civil institutions. The bulk of donor money is actually required at the stage of infrastructure development which in Afghanistan’s case is still a good five years down the road. Would Afghanistan be able to hold the West’s attention for another five years? Very doubtful. Hold back all your cement and all your steel, please.