Source/Credit: The Peninsula Qatar
By The Peninsula Qatar | April 1, 2011
KABUL: When Afghan businessman Rahim won a lucrative deal from a Nato sub-contractor to build a road in the violence-hit south of the country, he put in a call to a local Taliban leader.
The pair cut a deal -- every month Rahim would meet a Taliban representative and quietly hand over $20,000. In return, the insurgents would leave his project alone.
“It was a good deal. We finished the project in seven months, 20 days ahead of schedule, without once being attacked,” he told said.
As the United States and its Western allies ramp up development in Afghanistan ahead of a planned military withdrawal, a significant proportion of the money spent is going to the very organisation they are here to defeat.
Much of the construction work is being done in the south and east, the areas worst-hit by the fighting, many of which are controlled by the Taliban.
Even Nato, encouraged by the United States, is undertaking more and more development work alongside its anti-Taliban operations, banking on a combination of the two to bring peace to the volatile region.
Several entrepreneurs, some with family or tribal links to the insurgents, revealed two documents: their contract with Nato or one of its sub-contractors, and a letter signed by the Taliban leadership authorising the project.
The strategy does not always work -- one of Rahim’s competitors, Shahir, tried to cut a deal with the Taliban in another part of southern Afghanistan and was rejected on the basis that the area was strategically too important.
He went ahead with the road-building project anyway, but had to give up after three months.
“The Taliban planted bombs all around the road and sometimes attacked us directly,” said Shahir. “I lost 25 men and $4m.”
The Taliban on Monday claimed responsibility for an attack that saw three suicide bombers ram an explosives-laden truck into a construction depot in the east of the country, killing 24 workers and wounding 59 others.
Officially, the Taliban still oppose any project funded by what they term foreign “invaders”.
But unofficially, local businessmen say the insurgents are prepared to turn a blind eye to those that are supported by the local population, usually for a fee of around 10 percent of the project cost. Thomas Ruttig of the Afghan Analysts Network, a Kabul think tank, believes Western aid money is now one of the insurgents’ main sources of income.
“The Taliban have changed their behaviour vis-a-vis the reconstruction,” he told. “Their overall policy now is to present themselves as a parallel government that is good to people.”
The result, says Rahim, is an acceptance of small building projects for things like schools and clinics, but a rejection of asphalt roads, which could be used by foreign troops with their armoured vehicles. Arnold Fields, who until recently oversaw US reconstruction efforts in Afghanistan, said in October that the US government was unable to determine exactly how nearly $18bn paid to almost 7,000 mostly private contractors between 2007 and 2009 had been spent.
A spokesman for the Nato-led International Security Assistance Force told its rules “make it clear that our contracting funds should be spent with contractors who work for the best interest of the Afghan people”.
But Afghanistan’s Western-backed government is more pragmatic. “Companies paying the Taliban is not a problem for us,” Ahmad Shah Wahid, deputy minister for public works, told. “The main thing is to get the job done.”
Analyst Ruttig despairs of the situation. “The militarisation and privatisation of aid prevent the development of Afghan institutions,” he said.
AFP
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