A View from the Field: Afghanistan

Published April 20, 2009 @ 08:46AM PT

This is part of an occasional series with first-hand reports from those working in some of the more difficult corners of the world.

This post is from a friend who spent years working for NGOs in Afghanistan - in this piece, she discusses some of the many difficulties aid workers face in the country, not least of which is growing insecurity.

So far this year, five aid workers have been killed in Afghanistan.

I really hate the programs donors are funding and as a program manager do not want to be responsible for sending my national staff to communities that can not possibly guarantee their safety to deliver 'human capacity development' trainings when what they need is very basic humanitarian relief. I had some close security calls and don't want to risk staff lives over projects that do not save lives. At this point, expats should only be doing remote management.

I don't really enjoy 'remote' management but certainly have a lot of experience in this! If you can not go on monitoring missions, which is the best part of aid work, it gets old fast. I do believe that the vast majority of the country should be off limits to expats on monitoring missions. I am still shocked by the IRC incident last August [ed. - when three staff and a driver were killed] and blame the organization.

And I refuse to work on a USAID-funded project in Afghanistan. I don't want to work for a beltway bandit and it is so frustrating to meet frat boys in their mid-20's without graduate degrees or much (sometimes any) international experience making so much money!!!!

[N.B. - for more information on remote management, see here.]

[AP photo of an International Peace Day rally in Afghanistan in 2008]

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"I refuse to work on a USAID-funded project in Afghanistan. I don't want to work for a beltway bandit and it is so frustrating to meet frat boys in their mid-20's without graduate degrees or much (sometimes any) international experience making so much money!!!!"

Really? I work for a USAID-funded organization with a project in Afghanistan, and the head office won't allow any expats younger than 35 and with less than an MA anywhere near it (case in point: I am 22 and it's off-limits for me). Maybe this is not true of other USAID-funded projects, but I've heard it's pretty standard.

I thought not-yet-sober frat boy ex-Hill interns was more a USAID Iraq thing, and much less common there after 2006.

Posted by Transitionl... . on 04/20/2009 @ 10:18PM PT
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Michael has worked for NGOs in Afghanistan, across east and central Africa, and Iraq. Prior to going overseas, he worked on a project providing assistance to the United Nations on the application of International Humanitarian Law to the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict.