SIPRI Insights on Peace and Security
SUMMARY
w After the departure of the
International Security
Assistance Force (ISAF),
delivering development
assistance in Afghanistan can
return to common practices
and procedures used in other
insecure areas such as Somalia
and Sudan (and already in areas
of Afghanistan). This means
that the international
community must develop a
civilian entry strategy and
communicate to the Afghan
population that civilian entry,
not military exit, is its strategy
for the future.
Donors should ignore the
current commitment to channel
50 per cent of assistance
through the central
government budget. Instead, in
each sector (e.g. health care,
education, security) an
eective division of labour
must be established between
the central and provincial
governments, non-
governmental organizations
(NGOs) and the private sector.
Involving NGOs, the private
sector and the local population
in the delivery of basic services
does not have to be at the
expense of government control
or legitimacy.
International aid donors
need to pay further attention to
security and rule of law. But
alternatives to the current
strategy, which is often
perceived as being militarized
and short-term, have to be
found. It is often more eective
to integrate these issues into
broader development
programmes.
DEVELOPMENT ASSISTANCE
IN AFGHANISTAN AFTER
2014: FROM THE MILITARY
EXIT STRATEGY TO A
CIVILIAN ENTRY STRATEGY
*
No. 2013/4 October 2013
I. Introduction
With the closure of the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) and
the withdrawal of most North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) forces
scheduled for the end of 2014, international assistance for Afghanistan is
entering a new era. Many donors have become accustomed to the presence of
ISAF’s military infrastructure and provincial reconstruction teams (PRTs)
and to providing assistance in a highly militarized environment. Those
donors now face a number of strategic questions and dilemmas regarding the
provision of development assistance after 2014. Even though a residual inter-
national military presence will remain, donors are considering how they can
continue to provide development assistance and perhaps use it to increase
assistance to the Afghan Government in the provision of security and rule of
law while operating in the absence of the current military infrastructures,
in a potentially deteriorating security environment, and with a government
that still has insucient capacity and faces rampant corruption.
This paper considers the following three questions.
1.After the departure of ISAF, and in a potentially more insecure environ-
ment, how can donors continue to provide development assistance?
2.Through which channels is the post-2014 development assistance best
distributed?
3.In absence of the security and military tools previously used to provide
assistance to security and rule of law in Afghanistan, how can such assis-
tance continue through development assistance instruments?
These questions are addressed in turn in sections II–IV. Section V presents
conclusions and a number of recommendations on how donors can formu-
late—and promote—elements of a civilian entry strategy to parallel and
replace the military exit strategy. The paper is intended to contribute to the
discussion on the way forward for aid donors.
* The research for this paper was commissioned by Cordaid. SIPRI and the author are
grateful to Cordaid for its generous funding of this work.
