Rebuilding Afghanistan in Times of Crisis

A Global Response

Adenrele Awotona

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2019
• eBook ISBN:
  9781351334006
• Topic: Architecture
• Subtopic: Architecture General

Rebuilding Afghanistan in Times of Crisis provides academics and researchers interested in planning, urbanism and conflict studies with a multidisciplinary, international assessment of the reconstruction and foreign aid efforts in Afghanistan.

The book draws together expert contributions from countries across three continents – Asia, Europe and North America – which have provided external aid to Afghanistan. Using international, regional and local approaches, it highlights the importance of rebuilding sustainable communities in the midst of ongoing uncertainties. It explores the efficacy of external aid; challenges faced; the response of multilateral international agencies; the role of women in the reconstruction process; and community-based natural disaster risk management strategies. Finally, it looks at the lessons learned in the conflict reconstruction process to better prepare the country for future potential human, economic, infrastructural and institutional vulnerabilities.

Part I

Background

Introduction to Part I

Adenrele Awotona

Part I, which consists of three chapters, provides a broad context to the contributions in this volume. Chapter 1, “Housing and disaster risk management in uncertain times: notes on Afghanistan” by Adenrele Awotona, reveals that Afghanistan’s woes go beyond the enduring destructive wars and long-drawn-out conflict. It is a country where “natural” and “human-made” disasters amalgamate, being persistently afflicted by extensive natural catastrophes such as floods, extreme winter and snow avalanches, earthquakes, landslides and drought. Although the interactions between these two sets of disasters are multifaceted and challenging to ascertain, together they have resulted in an enormous loss of lives, livelihoods and property, in addition to food insecurity, urban and rural poverty and mass migrations to neighboring countries. They have also caused a substantial upsurge in the population of slum dwellers, unsafe towns and cities, environmental destruction and heightened vulnerability to disaster risk due to continuing reduction in coping capacities. People in disaster-prone areas, which additionally lack adequate infrastructure, are the most vulnerable because of extreme poverty, the scarcity of employment opportunities and poor health conditions. Hence, this chapter examines the extent to which the government of Afghanistan, with the support of massive external aid, has been able to effectively address the country’s continuing vulnerability, poor housing and dreadful environmental conditions, all of which have been aggravated by natural disasters.

In Chapter 2, Peter Marsden provides a historical overview of the Afghan economy. The country has generally survived as a subsistence economy, with its largely desert terrain rendering it highly vulnerable to fluctuating harvests and natural catastrophes. Small-scale informal trading and labor migration, primarily to Pakistan and Iran, have enabled families to increase the economic options available to them based on highly fluid responses to a constantly changing environment. External investment by the former Soviet Union, the United States, Europe, Iran, the World Bank and the Asian Development Bank has strengthened the infrastructure through a network of roads – albeit with security-related and other setbacks to the maintenance of that network – together with the provision of electricity to the major urban centers. Private sector investment beyond the informal sector has, however, been very limited, the major exceptions being the establishment of a nationwide mobile phone and Internet service and Chinese and Turkish investment to develop oil, gas and copper reserves.

Chapter 3, “Locality and power: a methodological approach to Afghan rural politics” by Sayed Asef Hossaini, which is a study of Afghan rural politics, examines Afghanistan as a rural country where almost 75 percent of its population lives in rural areas (World Bank Group 2018). At least since the beginning of the twentieth century, Afghanistan has been struggling to establish a stable central state. The country’s contemporary history obviously indicates how the central state has failed to deal properly with rural areas during the process of expanding bureaucracy as a mechanism of authority across the territory. The central state, whether in the form of a monarchy, republic or communist state, has not been able to bring rural communities under its control. Rural communities are geographically far from the center and demographically too heterogeneous in language, ethnicity and religion. Despite an administrative categorization by the central state, there is not a clear-cut boundary between different administrative units, particularly in rural Afghanistan. Sayed Asef Hossaini notes that the interconnectivity between the political power and the locality in Afghanistan could be argued at two levels of national and local politics. In terms of the national politics, the geographical characteristics of the settlements of each ethnic group have granted privileges to or brought about disadvantages for that group. At the local level, the concept of power has also been tightly connected to the notion of locality, while power is mainly interpreted as the accessibility to natural resources. In other words, the study of the power structure and the locality in a rural community is more about the relations between the “low-dynamic parts of rural systems (e.g. nature, ecosystems) and the high dynamic parts including farming, housing, recreation and transport” (Bowler et al. 2002, 199) in the context of social relationships.

The aim of this chapter, however, is not to argue for the significance of locality in the formation of the power structure. Rather, it concentrates on the methodological aspects of rural study by using various theoretical frameworks, including Herbert Gans’s use-center theory and Pierre Bourdieu’s social space.

References

Bowler, Ian R., Bryant, C. R. and Cocklin, Chris. 2002. The Sustainability of Rural Systems: Geographical Interpretations, Dordrecht: Springer Netherlands.

World Bank Group. 2018. Rural population (% of total population). https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/sp.rur.totl.zs. Retrieved April 3, 2019.

1 Housing and disaster risk management in uncertain times

Notes on Afghanistan

Adenrele Awotona

Introduction

The three stated goals of the five-year (2008–2013) Afghanistan National Development Strategy (ANDS) were (Islamic Republic of Afghanistan 2008) as follows:

• Security: Achieve nationwide stabilization, strengthen law enforcement and improve personal security for every Afghan
• Governance, rule of law and human rights: Strengthen democratic processes and institutions, human rights, the rule of law, the delivery of public services and government accountability
• Economic and social development: Reduce poverty, ensure sustainable development through a private sector–led market economy, improve human development indicators and make significant progress toward the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).

However, according to the British Government (2014), “over 30 years of conflict have left Afghanistan one of the poorest countries in the world.” Box 1 illustrates the country’s demographic profile. The effect of the extensive years of war and viciousness in the country has been colossal in terms of human loss and material destruction.¹ For example, in Kabul alone, where nearly 70,000 houses were ruined (Chopra 2007), as much as 70 percent of its current population of over five million inhabitants lives in informal and squatter settlements (Gilsinan 2013) due to a severe deficiency of affordable housing for the low-income and the poor. It has been estimated that over 500,000 homes were damaged throughout the country (UNCHR 2014a). Since 1980, disasters caused by natural hazards have also affected nine million people and caused over 20,000 fatalities in the country (Deltares website).

Table 1.1 shows Afghanistan’s population growth from 1955 to 2016, and Table 1.2 illustrates the Afghanistan population forecast from 2020 to 2050. The population growth rate and rapid urbanization, which have been exacerbated by the return of 5.8 million refugees since 2002 (Sharifzai et al. 2015), have resulted in an acute housing need, among other major urban planning issues.² Millions of Afghans have been forced to flee from their homes to Pakistan, Iran or other parts of Afghanistan by a combination of war and drought. Table 1.3 illustrates the number of Afghans who voluntarily returned between 2002 and 2013 to Afghanistan from their country of asylum. UNHCR’s shelter assistance program, which gives “priority to vulnerable returnee families that possess land or are allowed to use land, but lack the financial means to build a home, … aims to support vulnerable returnees as part of initial reintegration assistance,” built only 1,638 dwellings in 2013 and about 220,000 between 2002 and 2013 (UNCHR 2014a, 3–4).³

Table 1.1 Population of Afghanistan (2016 and earlier)

Table 1.2 Afghanistan Population Forecast

Studies indicate that Afghanistan is home to the largest refugee population in the world (Sharifzai et al. 2015) and that Kabul’s “biggest problem isn’t suicide bombers or militants … it’s the traffic” (Gilsinan 2013).

Afghanistan, however, does not have a national housing policy (Sharifzai et al. 2015). Furthermore, the UN-Habitat (2015) notes that although Afghan cities are a driving force of social and economic development, state building and peacebuilding, yet their full potential has been constrained by the absence of an effective urban policy and regulatory framework, insufficient and poorly coordinated investment and weak municipal governance and land management.⁴

Box 1 Demographic Profile of Afghanistan

• The current population of Afghanistan is 33,498,383 as of August 30, 2016, based on the latest United Nations estimates.
• Afghanistan population is equivalent to 0.44 percent of the total world population.
• Afghanistan ranks number 40 on the list of countries by population.
• The population density in Afghanistan is 51 per square kilometer (132 per square mile).
• The total land area is 653,032 square kilometers (252,137 square miles).
• 26.3 percent of the population is urban (8,880,234 people in 2016).
• The median age in Afghanistan is 17.8 years.

Source: Worldometers (Reproduced with their permission)

www.worldometers.info/world-population/afghanistan-population/

Retrieved August 31, 2016

Table 1.3 Voluntary Repatriation 2002–2013

Year From Pakistan From Iran Other Countries Total	From Pakistan	From Iran	From other countries	Total
2002	1,565,066	259,792	9,679	1,834,537
2003	332,183	142,280	1,176	475,639
2004	383,321	377,151	650	761,122
2005	449,391	63,559	1,140	514,090
2006	133,338	5,264	1,202	139,804
2007	357,635	7,054	721	365,410
2008	274,200	3,656	628	278,484
2009	48,320	6,028	204	54,552
2010	104,331	8,487	150	112,968
2011	48,998	18,851	113	67,962
2012	79,435	15,035	86	94,556
2013	30,388	8,247	131	38,766
Total	3,806,606	915,404	15,880	4,737,890

Source: (UNCHR 2014b, reproduced with the permission of the author)

Some of the reasons for these deficiencies are rooted in the fact that “basic information for urban areas does not exist, is outdated, or not shared” according to Sadat Mansoor Naderi, Afghanistan’s minister for urban development affairs (UN-Habitat 2015, iii). The other challenges for the country’s urban planning and housing include “insufficient capacity and resources, corruption, gender inequality and limited transparency and accountability” (UN-Habitat 2015, iv), as well as the precariousness of governmental institutions, which are “unable to provide effective governance, efficiently deliver basic services to the population and guarantee human security in the country” (Raqeebi 2013, iii). Indeed, as noted by Calogero (2011, 223), “much of the planning of Kabul takes place as risk-management decisions, made in the United States and Europe.” However, Calogero (2011, 224) continues,

Few of the Westerners working in Kabul have also worked professionally in urban planning in their “home” countries. Thus, what they were using as an implicit referent of “the normal” was actually an idealized image of professional practice “back home.” This seems natural in a discursive framing where aid workers and development specialists conceive of their work as entirely different from urban planning – a reproduction of difference that Robinson has eloquently refuted in her work.

The absence of an “urban agenda” to guide urban development...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of figures
• List of tables
• Contributor biographies
• Preface
• Part I Background
• Part II The role of women in the reconstruction process
• Part III International donor community responses
• Index