The Challenges to Nation-Building

in Afghanistan continues...

These figures, however, could exaggerate the level of backwardness implicit in the initial conditions from which Afghanistan must begin its process of reconstruction and revival. According to C.P. Chandrashekhar, two factors had contributed to the high ‘aggregate poverty’ indicated by a per capita income that is less than half of the international poverty norm of a dollar per day per head by 2001.

The first is the war that led to the ouster of

the Taleban. An earlier estimate, also quoted by the ADB, relating to 1989,

placed Afghanistan’s GDP at a much higher $6.9 billion and its per capita income at around $300. The situation could have further improved in the years following 1989, since reports indicate that at least in regions fully occupied by the Taleban, economic conditions were stable during the early and the mid-1990s. Underlying the subsequent massive contraction of the economy was the war that devastated the limited infrastructure of the country, triggered the exodus of more than 3 million refugees to Pakistan, Iran and elsewhere and displaced a large number of people within the country.

This disrupted or even brought to a standstill much of the economic activity within the country. A corollary of this role of the war of the late 1990s in worsening economic condition is that a concerted

reconstruction effort focused on quick-impact projects combined with the

observed large-scale return of refugees to Afghanistan could ensure a sharp rise in GDP and per capita income to levels in the early 1990s.

To be continued........