Opinion: Afghanistan and Haiti — 2 countries with too much in common

I have spent the past few days focused on the collapse of Afghanistan and the devastating earthquake in Haiti. Both events led me to think about one thing: failed international policies.

Afghanistan and Haiti have faced decades of international intervention, ostensibly to make sure the same bad things don’t happen anymore. And yet here we are again.

In Afghanistan, we have an army of soldiers who cannot defend their country after nearly 20 years of considerable investment and training from the international community. Instead, the Afghan forces fled their fighting positions and dumped their uniforms when the Taliban swept through the country. The president has fled with his wife, leaving his people to a worrying future.

In Haiti, a 7.2 magnitude earthquake hit the southwest of the country, leaving thousands of people dead and many more injured. Hospitals are overloaded. Homes and infrastructure have been damaged and destroyed — largely due to faulty construction. The worst of the damage could have been avoided if governments had adopted, implemented, and enforced basic building codes following the country’s 2010 earthquake.

In neither Haiti nor Afghanistan has the international community succeeded in making the government accountable. Instead, both have been run by leaders who have not been able to care for and protect their own people. We have seen this again and again.

This has never been clearer for me than today, as I scrambled with my team to source, buy, and transport tents for our colleagues in the southwest of Haiti. We chased leads with contacts across the country to provide basic shelter so that our staff members don’t have to spend another night sleeping outside. Speaking to a colleague in the United States this week, I said that in the past few months alone, the role of crisis manager has seemed to remain at the top of my job description. For many Haitians, crisis is their daily reality.

Natural disasters have not been the cause of turmoil, food and economic insecurity, and systemic poverty in the country, but the catalyst. In search of a cause, it is necessary to look beyond recent political events and disaster response to decades of ineffective governance and international support.

Well before the 2010 earthquake, rural communities had not received training on sustainable farming practices or animal well-being. The same can be said for the southwest of the country before Saturday’s earthquake. As a result of this and generations of outside influence, most of the country’s small farms perform well below capacity, food systems do not operate or recover properly, and farming families themselves are destined to be impoverished and food insecure.

Programs and partnerships that work in local communities and train Haiti’s citizens to be successful entrepreneurs are the only path forward for national security and sustainable development. To rebuild Haiti, we must mobilize our people to lead successful lives, which means equipping Haitians with the right tools to rebuild their businesses.

But a stable business environment needs reliable institutions, which have been absent for many years now in Haiti. To blame this on the country’s political system is the easy way out. In a nation where outside influence has become the norm, we have to look deeper for a solution to Haiti’s problems — and the international community must take its fair share of the blame.

In both Haiti and Afghanistan, it’s time for the international community to change its strategy and stop supporting the most convenient politicians. It's time to support real local leaders who are honest and competent, with a clear vision for the development of their countries and their people. And it’s time for innovative solutions that come from the Haitian and Afghan people themselves and truly represent the conditions they live under.

Far too much funding has been spent in these countries without real results. Taxpayer money must be used to build a better future for the people, not enrich political elites and their enablers. We can and should do better. We owe it to the Haitians and Afghans who have suffered so much.