Good for Afghanistan, Good for America.
We all know that Afghanistan has one of the most corrupt governments on the planet. This is mainly due to the fact that it has never paid to be honest in Afghanistan. Since before Alexander's failed campaign over 2,000 years ago, Afghanistan has been ruled by the fist. After 100 generations of brutality, watching your family starve on principle just doesn't make a lot of sense. Can we really blame them?
This is finally beginning to affect international policy in Afghanistan. For the last ten years, and the ten before that, and probably the ten before that, various aid organizations have been sending money to various agencies in Afghanistan to help the poor beleagured masses. A good example is the $70,000,000 sent by Saudi Arabia this year to help pilgrims make the Hajj - the yearly Muslim trek to Mecca. Unsurprisingly the Hajj Minister promptly helped himself to $20,000,000. And I wouldn't be the least bit surprised to find that lower level functionaries, all the way down to the local level, stuck their hand in the till. That's how it works in Afghanistan.
Tired of fueling the corruption, agencies such as the US Institute for Peace have been studying ways to combat this problem. One of the more effective strategies their Director for Pakistan and Afghanistan, Alex Thier, has identified, is bypassing the central government and going directly to local organizations. For instance, the National Solidarity Program (NSP), an Afghan agency that distributes foreign money to localities in Afghanistan, has been directly involved with aid programs to over 22,000 villages. But there is a more telling statistic and one that we as Americans can learn from. Using local labor and local decision making, the NSP has collaborated in the construction of hundreds of schools. In essense, local Afghan leadership and workers used foreign money to buld their own schools without the involvement of the central government. While this is a good thing, there is a shocking revelation that goes along with it. It is well known that the Taliban spends a lot of time burning down schools in Afghanistan. But of the hundreds of schools built by the NSP, only two have been destroyed by Taliban terrorists. Two.
This points out a fundamental trait of human social interaction. When people - not governments - have ownership, success follows. In the case cited above, local people who built their own school are going to see that it doesn't get destroyed. Conversely, Taliban actions against these schools would result in massive pushback against the Taliban. Put local people in charge and good things happen. This scenario isn't specific to Afghanistan but has been repeated the world over for thousands of years.
So why is the US Government trying to insert itself more and more deeply into state and local affairs? Every piece of evidence gathered over the last hundred years (or more) shows that tighter government control results in a shrinking middle class, an expanding lower class, and a fixed upper class. And why does this always happen? The reason is ridiculously simple: when people can get money for free, they do. And unchecked bureaucrats are the first to get their hand in the till. Following their example, lower level functionaries make sure they get their cut too. By the time the money is to be used for it's 'intended' purpose, there isn't enough left to do any good. So taxes are raised and even more money is allocated the next time around - with predictable results. Why does it keep happening? Because the 'intended' purpose isn't to fund local activities, the real purpose is to fund bureaucrats.
So let us civilized Americans take a lesson from those barbarians in the East. Even they've figured out that less government is better for everyone. Why should we think it would be any different here?
Futbol Guru, www.not-a-lemming