Afghanistan post-2014: Humanitarian relief or long-term development?

Remote monitoring could well be the future for U.S. development programs in Afghanistan. At least that’s the message from some officials who are optimistic that remote monitoring — the variety of techniques that allow limited monitoring to continue when visiting a project’s physical location may be too risky — can help them continue oversight of foreign assistance programs in the conflict-ridden country if U.S. military forces draw down as expected this year. Typically used as more of a last resort to keep life and death humanitarian assistance programs running, activities like satellite imaging, cell phone surveys, third party informants, and commodities tracking will likely occupy a larger role in Washington’s longer term economic development and reconstruction strategy in Afghanistan, according to a well-placed U.S. official. The U.S. Agency for International Development is putting up $200 million for a new “remote monitoring program” that officials hope can fill in the gaps in program oversight expected to emerge if physical access to project sites declines when international security forces withdraw. And the office of the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction — which has in the past been widely critical of the U.S.-led stabilization and development effort — stepped out of its traditional auditing and inspecting role and co-hosted a symposium to generate best practices and ignite a policy dialogue around remote monitoring last month. The buzz has been fueled by optimism that the global communications revolution of the past few decades can make aid monitoring much easier in the same way it has done with information access. Afghanistan and a handful of other conflict are currently testing that hypothesis with ongoing aid programs. At the same time, a number of leaders within the U.S. international development community, especially USAID Administrator Rajiv Shah, have brought a renewed focus on infusing development programs with innovative technologies. That has in turn raised expectations that satellite imaging, geospatial data gathering, cell phone surveys, and other remote monitoring methods can complement a more traditional, “boots on the ground” approach to tracking the progress of programs in dangerous places. But amid the enthusiasm about new monitoring techniques and technologies one important question remains: If remote monitoring is going to play a larger role in guiding Afghanistan’s future aid programs, will those programs focus on long-term economic and social development outcomes— as USAID leaders have suggested they will — or is aid to Afghanistan poised to turn into a humanitarian relief operation, for which remote monitoring is better suited? The wave of the future? Since remote monitoring is typically used to track relatively basic inputs and outputs associated with emergency relief and construction — like the completion of a road or the delivery of food supplies — it remains unclear how or if international aid donors will be able to gather sufficient information remotely to evaluate programs that seek more difficult to measure outcomes, like improved agricultural production or access to better health services. “Remote monitoring is already a sub-optimal solution,” Abby Stoddard, senior program advisor at New York University's Center on International Cooperation, told Devex. “No one wants to monitor remotely if they can help it. We’re already saying we’re going to do the best we can with this, and typically that means … we’re only going to be able to track inputs and outputs, and we won’t really be able to measure outcomes and impacts and the longer-term things.” USAID’s planned “remote monitoring program” will hire three development contractors – one of them from Afghanistan – to provide “sufficient, accurate, and verified information on the progress of projects,” to allow the agency “to make strategic decisions about the direction of its project portfolio.” The current request for proposals, while still only a draft, appears to leave much of the responsibility for designing remote monitoring approaches to the implementing partners the agency intends to hire. That could be a problem if the monitoring framework is designed in isolation from a discussion about broader strategic goals, and whether or not progress toward them can actually be measured remotely. U.S. aid implementers may be able to use remote monitoring to gather some information about the projects they are implementing, but if that information is too limited to determine whether or not it is contributing to improved development outcomes, then policymakers could struggle both to justify and to revise the direction of programs. In light of those challenges, the post-2014 “transition” in Afghanistan is being preceded by another, less hopeful process: instead of incorporating innovative remote monitoring approaches into their programs, a few NGOs are reportedly transitioning away from long-term development programming and towards providing for more “acute humanitarian needs,” according to Stoddard, who recently visited the country to conduct research on humanitarian and development programs. The reason for that transition –— from development to relief, instead of from on-the-ground monitoring to remote monitoring — likely comes down to a simple explanation: “If it’s too dangerous to do monitoring, it’s far too dangerous to actually implement programs,” Andrew Wilder, vice president of South and Central Asia programs at the Unites States Institute of Peace, told Devex. Wilder, who has watched international assistance to Afghanistan walk a fine line between development, relief, and military stabilization for decades, believes any buzz around remote monitoring is a cause for concern, not celebration. “I certainly hope that remote monitoring isn’t the wave of the future, because that generally would suggest the situation’s going to get a lot worse in Afghanistan,” he said. But he remains hopeful that may not be the case. While many observers look at shrinking U.S. assistance budgets for Afghanistan and security forces in decline and assume development efforts will similarly fade, Wilder is more optimistic. Far from signaling a closing window for development operations, the military drawdown in Afghanistan might mean development objectives finally take center stage. The combined U.S. military and development operation, which Wilder called “the militarization of aid,” forced development and security programs into what many agree has been an uneasy alliance. “Development assistance is quite effective at achieving development objectives, but not so much at achieving political and security objectives,” said Wilder. He added: “We pumped more and more money into the most insecure areas thinking somehow that would be stabilizing, but that fueled the corruption and delegitimized the government and fueled the insurgency.” Now, with U.S. aid to Afghanistan shrinking and U.S. forces poised to withdraw, perhaps the decline in international security forces points not to the need for remote monitoring that can take their place, but to the opportunity for organizations to resume a more normal development agenda. Identifying goals Aid oversight has attracted so much attention — and criticism — in Afghanistan precisely because of the amount of money being spent there, more than any other country in USAID’s portfolio. Now, organizations will have to adapt their programs to the reality of less money, and that could mean greater accountability, Wilder said, reflecting on an earlier era in Afghanistan when aid and military objectives similarly overlapped. In the 1980s, the U.S. government funded efforts by armed militias to defeat the Soviet Red Army. “When the Soviets withdrew, a lot of that money dried up,” Wilder remembered. “We all were forced to take a hard look at what we were doing, cut programs, reduce staff; and frankly we saw a tremendous professionalization of the aid industry in the nineties because there was a lot less money, and the agendas became less political.” But for Afghanistan in 2014, where elections slated for next month will pave the way for a post-Karzai administration and the fate of a bilateral security agreement with the U.S. remains uncertain, Wilder admits “that may be wishful thinking.” The persistent tension between development and security goals points to what some consider a more fundamental weakness of U.S. assistance programs in Afghanistan, which cuts even deeper than the challenges of monitoring in dangerous environments. “To really have a sense of whether what you’re doing is working or not … you have to have a strong understanding of what it is you’re trying to accomplish, what your objectives are in the first place,” Elizabeth Field, SIGAR assistant inspector general for audits and inspections, told Devex. “If you don’t really have a strong sense of what that is, that makes it very difficult to assess outcomes, even in an environment where you don’t have issues with remote monitoring.” With so many questions remaining about what U.S. assistance to Afghanistan will look like after 2014, it is too early to know whether U.S. development objectives for the country will get more or less clear as security forces drawdown. But, according to Field, there might be some opportunity within the process of designing and contracting remote monitoring programs for the international development community to focus on one goal U.S. officials have consistently held up as vital to Afghanistan’s post-2014 transition: building local capacity on the ground. With much of the focus on any remote monitoring effort likely to be on involving Afghans as third party informants, the organizations and individuals who serve in those monitoring functions – whether for humanitarian or long-term development programs – are poised to gain expertise and experience as development practitioners. “That, you could argue, is a goal in and of itself,” said Field. It’s a goal that could prove valuable to development operations in Afghanistan if international monitoring expertise diminishes alongside the international military presence — but it’s also a goal that dovetails with the U.S. government’s “local solutions” agenda, which seeks to direct more U.S. aid funding to host-country organizations and governments, and the lessons learned in building local capacity to do monitoring and evaluation in Afghanistan could inform a broader effort to "localize" aid implementation around the world. Read more on U.S. aid reform online, and subscribe to The Development Newswire to receive top international development headlines from the world’s leading donors, news sources and opinion leaders — emailed to you FREE every business day. See more: How USAID 'pushed back' to quell Afghanistan oversight fears Larry Sampler on USAID in Afghanistan Future of women's rights under the spotlight in Afghanistan