Development

This afternoon, the New America Foundation hosted "The New Forgotten War," a talk about the future of Iraq. It featured Ad Melkert, the special representative for the U.N. secretary-general in Iraq.

Melkert, a former Dutch member of parliament, remains cautiously optimistic about Iraq's future, with an emphasis on the cautious part. The good news is that security in Iraq is better than it was two years ago. Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki has been able to confront violence in the southern part of the country, Melkert said. As a result of the safer state, investment is starting to rise, but it still has a long way to go. Corruption, the terrible infrastructure, and legal concerns hamper Iraq's ability to draw serious investment.

One serious problem for the nascent state is budgetary, Melkert said. When oil prices are high, the government spends all of its revenue, but when they fall, they have to slash the budget.

Further, Iraq is still under dozens of UN chapter seven sanctions, stemming from Saddam Hussein's invasion of Kuwait. The current leadership says these sanctions need to be lifted because they were implemented against Hussein and not the current government.

These problems could potentially be amplified in the coming months and years as foreign security forces draw down in the country. Melkert said that one of two things will happen. Either the Iraqi forces will somehow maintain order, or the insurgents will attack as soon as the United States leaves. Right now, police officers, public servants, and UN workers and buildings remain prime targets.

New America Foundation/Flickr

It was reported last week that attacks on and kidnappings of aid workers in Chad have caused six aid organizations, including the International Committee of the Red Cross, to suspend operations there. Undeterred, this morning the top U.N. official in Chad announced "positive signs on the horizon," predicting increased peace and stabilization in the country.

This isn't the first time violence has driven away aid groups: in May, 2008, the head of the Eastern Chad mission of British aid organization Save the Children was shot and killed. At first, the organization announced that it would continue working in the country, but five months after the killing ultimately decided to leave.

At this point, the situation doesn't seem that dire with regards to the ICRC: In an interview, Bernard Barrett, an ICRC spokesman, said, "We're not pulling out totally. We're suspending some activities -- we're maintaining life-saving services, particularly medical services." The organization's other work in Chad ranges from water sanitation projects to animal vaccinations; hardly trivial work, particularly given the persistent lack of food security. As far as resuming these activities, Barrett reports a wait-and-see scenario. "Once we've obtained the release of our delegate who was kidnapped, at that point we'll be able to ascertain the security situation," he says.

Chad is a country in dire need of help. Last May, Doctors Without Borders led the effort to combat an outbreak of meningitis, immunizing 7.5 million people in the region. DWB is another organization that has been driven to suspend operations in Chad because of the recent violence. It's terrible to contemplate how many deaths might have resulted from the 65,000 cases of infection in and around Chad had DWB left just six months earlier.  

The violence that has hindered desperately needed assistance ultimately stems from poor governance, said Richard Downie in an interview with FP. According to Downie, a fellow with the Africa Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, "Until you have credible political parties and some sort of civil society developing, it's hard to see the long-term prospects of Chad looking bright."

That sort of civil society seems a ways off. Chad ranks 173 out of the 180 countries surveyed in Transparency International's 2008 Corruption Perceptions Index, just three spots up from Afghanistan. And the country's heavily oil-dependent economy has only reinforced the political maladies that accompany "the devil's excrement."

It's tough to avoid Downie's conclusion: "I don't see a long-term solution to what's going on in Chad at the moment without much more engagement from the international community."

Photo:  FRANCESCO FONTEMAGGI/AFP/Getty Images

On Sunday, the New York Times published an article exposing problems with the wildly popular microfinance organization Kiva, a person-to-person lending site whose virtues Oprah Winfrey and Nicholas Kristof have extolled.

Most people thought Kiva works like this: Entrepreneurs in poor countries explain their need for a small loan on the site. Then, donors select a project they support, give an amount of their choosing, and watch the donations tally up on the page. Kiva trumpeted that "the people you see on Kiva's site are real individuals."

That was true. But it really works much differently, David Roodman of the Center for Global Development figured out. Kiva doesn't take dollars from one person and send them directly to another. All of the recipients are vetted, approved, and given loans by another organization -- then put on the site after the fact. Roodman wrote a meticulous (and ultimately complimentary) blog post debunking Kiva's story of itself and touched a nerve, ginning up thousands of comments and spurring the start-up to respond.

The problem wasn't just that Kiva misrepresented itself as a person-to-person microlender -- but that Kiva misrepresented itself as a hypertransparent organization. The information about the financial pathways was on the site, sure, but you had to dig around to find it.

Kiva has responded by changing the language on its site and clarifying the loan process. I'm happy to see it becoming more accountable and transparent, particularly as it becomes a larger organization. (Just this month, it lent its one-hundred-millionth dollar.)

But, at the end of the day, a $10 donation backstopping a pre-existing loan to a Colombian farmer doesn't seem so different to me than a $10 donation helping create a loan for that Colombian farmer. And if pooling the donated funds helps keep overhead costs down (high overhead being the main argument against person-to-person direct microlending), I'm all for that.

A World Bank research paper posted today finds that countries with a high proportion of young males with low levels of secondary education are significantly more conflict-prone. The combination of these "youth bulges" and low rates of secondary education is especially likely to lead to conflict in low- and middle-income countries, the authors also report. The findings focus particularly on Sub-Saharan Africa, as "the continent with the largest youth cohorts and the lowest levels of male secondary education, scoring on average nearly 30 percentage points lower than the world average."

Countries outside of the region also call for concern. In Syria, for example, males 14 years old and younger make up nearly 20 percent of the population. Only 39.1 percent of secondary school-aged students are enrolled in school, making it the 101st lowest-ranking country of 135 surveyed. In the long run, Syria is facing declining oil production and rapid population growth - a recipe for violent unrest.

The policy implications are clear. Programs that focus on primary education, like the U.N.'s Education for All and Millennium Development Goals programs are important (after all, students have to read and write before they can pursue secondary schooling), but there must be more support for programs like the World Bank's own Secondary Education in Africa initiative.

The total cost of a secondary education in Kenya is estimated at $6,865. A 2007 Oxfam report found that on average a "war, civil war, or insurgency shrinks an African economy by 15 percent," and conflict causes the continent to lose about $18 billion a year. You do the math.

Photo: SONIA ROLLEY/AFP/Getty Images

In a talk given this afternoon at the Miller Center of Public Affairs, retired Gen.  John Abizaid outlined his view of U.S. involvement in the Middle East. He argued that it is foolish to approach issues on a country-by-country basis, complaining that "we look at Iraq through a soda straw. We look at Afghanistan through a soda straw." Instead, says Abizaid, the United States must develop a regional strategy that accounts for the roles of Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and Iran.

For the same reason, he suggested, the debate over whether or not to send more troops to Afghanistan has been over-simplified; the discussion should be broadened to include the relative demands of Iraq, Afghanistan and the region at large.

Abizaid also emphasized the ideological nature of the conflict, and the need for soft power to address the root causes of radicalism. He noted that Baitullah Mehsud, the top Taliban leader, is referred to as "the commander of the faithful."

"While we may chuckle at that title," Abizaid said, "the people fighting for him do not." When asked whether there should be a shift to a counter-terrorism approach in Afghanistan that relies more upon targeted strikes than nation-building, Abizaid responded that such a plan is impractical. Stabilization in Afghanistan and Iraq is a precondition for effective counter terrorist operations, he argued, because it provides the infrastructure needed to develop the "superb, superb intelligence" needed.

The theme of the talk was that instability anywhere in the region is a serious threat to surrounding countries. With our "ground forces spread thin" and "our 24-7 forces totally engaged," the United States must more fully incorporate diplomatic, political and economic plans to get a handle on the region. A number of questions were directed to the resources required for such a broad regional approach, and towards the end of the talk, the retired general was asked if the situation would be better in Afghanistan had the United States not invaded Iraq.

"All's I know is that we did what we did, and we are where we are," he answered.

Dubai's VIPs swarmed its new metro system for the grand opening, taking advantage of the unique date. To steal a line from Blake, it's good to be a Sheikh in Dubai:

When a giant clock reached 09:09:09 on 9/9/09, Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid, Ruler of Dubai and Vice President of the UAE, swiped a personalised plastic card at a ticket barrier and took his place as the first passenger on a network that will, when finished, have cost an estimated Dh28 billion (US$7.6bn).

The first two trains were filled by VIPs but eventually, lucky members of the general public were allowed to take part in the festivities. 

A little later, a third train left the Nakheel Harbour and Tower station with 400 members of the public, the winners of “golden tickets”, picked from about 10,000 people who entered an online competition.
One of them, MV Martin, said: “I can’t believe I am going to be part of history.”

With all the layoffs in Dubai and abandoned luxury cars everywhere, the Metro could provide a cheaper transport option. Or maybe abandoned cars are still available for bargain prices? 

KARIM SAHIB/AFP/Getty Images

Over at UN Dispatch, Alanna Shaikh has a thought-provoking eulogy for Nicholas Negroponte's fizzling One-Laptop-Per-Child program:

Americans wanted the OLPC. We fell in love with its tremendous promise and adorable shape. (note: I own an OLPC) We were the first market it conquered. OLPC launched a give one-get one promotion that let individuals pay $400 to donate one laptop and receive one for themselves. It was a huge success, except that OLPC wasn’t set up for that kind of customer order fulfillment. Laptops arrived far later than promised, and several thousand orders were simply lost.

Once the laptop finally started arriving in the developing world, its impact was minimal. We think. No one is doing much research on their impact on education; discussions are largely theoretical. This we do know: OLPC didn’t provide tech support for the machines, or training in how to incorporate them into education. Teachers didn’t understand how to use the laptops in their lessons; some resented them. Kids like the laptops, but they don’t actually seem to help them learn.

It’s time to call a spade a spade. OLPC was a failure. ...

As Shaikh suggests, OLPC is a classic case of a development program more tailored to the tastes and interests of its funders, than the needs of the people it was supposed to help. Back to the drawing board. 

PAL PILLAI/AFP/Getty Images

Last week, Peter Bergen wrote an optimistic post titled "The Afghan Phoenix" over on the AfPak Channel, giving some counterfactuals to the doom and gloom over the plight of Afghanistan and the U.S. mission there. Five million refugees have returned to Afghanistan. One in six Afghans owns a cell phone. And, he notes, "You were more likely to be murdered in the United States in 1991 than an Afghan civilian is to be killed in the war today." This statistic struck me most, though: "In 2008, Afghanistan's real GDP growth was 7.5 percent. Under the Taliban the economy was in free fall."

I won't argue that Afghanistan's economy was anything other than terrible, and worsening, under the Taliban. It was and remains an impoverished country with a host of profound basic infrastructure and business development challenges -- from the lack of roads to the surfeit of bombs to the high illiteracy rate. It has a massive black-market economy. 80 percent of working-age men are involved in subsistence farming. A woefully high proportion of its population relies on the drug trade.

But I still don't find the 2008 GDP growth figure too much of a reason for optimism. Why? Afghanistan's GDP isn't growing because of booming Afghan production and consumption, or rising wages. Afghanistan's GDP is growing because of all the Americans and other foreigners -- around 65,000 troops and 200,000 nongovernmental workers -- building and buying things there (with dollars, no less), and because of the $57 billion pledged by international donors since 2002.

For an illustration of the phenomenon, see this chart of Afghan GDP in inflation-adjusted dollars, which I made with UN data. The Taliban took over in 1996, and Afghanistan's economy dwindled. The U.S. invaded in 2001, and it boomed. Afghanistan's GDP depends entirely on the armed force in charge. This isn't to say the local commerce supplying the 265,000 relatively flush foreigners in Afghanistan isn't real. But were the United States to drawdown, aid workers and military contractors and commerce would follow. My guess is that much of the GDP growth comes from service-sector jobs, not from new production. 

That's the real issue. Foreign spending in Afghanistan is a good thing for GDP. It's less clear whether it has fostered economically meaningful development. Dollars are all well and good -- but won't do much unless they help create businesses, employment, infrastructure development, and longer-term growth. (This is why Jonathan Zasloff's plan to hand out cash to Afghans wouldn't do much more than stoke inflation.) Whether they can remains the question.

Plus, many worry the U.S. troop presence cannot foster the foreign direct investment, local economic growth, agricultural development, and security and economic paradigm the country so desperately needs. But the U.S. military is hoping so. The civil-military plan by U.S. Ambassador Karl Eikenberry and Gen. Stanley McChrystal Laura Rozen posted today mentions the Afghan economy, licit agriculture, cross-border commerce, and reconstruction dozens of times.