WASHINGTON–As the military pulls out of Afghanistan next year, they’re taking not only personnel but also pocket money .
While experts disagree on just how the disappearance of these funds might affect the Afghan economy, many agree with Rachel Patterson of the Kaufman Foundation that there are “more questions that are unanswerable then there are answers .”
Commander’s Emergency Response Program funds, the Department of Defense program emphasizing spending as a means to stability, will disappear with the withdrawal of American forces. Although CERP funds were not meant to bolster the developing Afghan economy, priorities listed in the 2009 Money as a Weapon System Afghanistan Manual, including employing locals and high project visibility, mean that they have played a crucial role in providing jobs and funds for certain provinces.
Some experts at the Rand Corporation and the Kauffman Foundation believe that the removal of CERP could be helpful in stabilizing both the Afghan economy and security situation. Others say the economic effects of removing such large chunks of money from an aid-based economy could push an already unstable financial situation to the brink.
“I definitely got the impression that there is sort of an aid economy, a war economy at work here [in Afghanistan,” said Colin Cookman, a national security associate at the Center for American Progress.
“We don’t have a good sense of how this money flowing in is affecting the economy…There’s going to be job losses, there’s going to shifts in the security industry, the transportation industry. There’s no doubt there’s going to be a short term destabilizing effect of this.”
International money accounts for 90 percent of Afghanistan’s GDP, inflating the economy and leaving skilled workers forsaking other jobs in favor of working with the military.
“You’re putting a lot of cash into the economy that wasn’t there before,” Cookman said.
James Dobbins, director of the Rand International Security and Defense Policy Center, said that because of this inflation, removing CERP funds could help improve the economic situation in Afghanistan.
“Some diminishment in the level of assistance might be a good thing from a macroeconomic standpoint,” said Dobbins.
Rachel Patterson, a consultant at the Kauffman Foundation and co-author of “The Commander as Investor: Changing CERP Practices” agreed.
Economics and security, Patterson said, “reinforce each other in negative ways as much as positive ways.”
Despite the fact that CERP funds were designed to stabilize areas where traditional aid programs cannot reach, they can also lead to conflicts over who receives payment, incentivizing the wrong behavior. Recognizing this, the CERP handbook says that even with the best intentions, poorly designed programs can do more harm than good.
“Some people are killing each other for corrupt reasons,” Patterson said. “Maybe there’s conflict because of the way resources are allocated…no amount of forces are going to change that.”
Removing some of these stabilization programs, then, could positively impact security even as it initially destabilizes certain provinces.
One of the few certainties as the drawdown moves closer is that, as Cookman said, the gravy train of international aid won’t be flowing forever. With all the plans for a troop drawdown, one thing that has not been looked into is how to help an Afghan government that Cookman says is on the verge of collapse when they cannot pay for the programs Americans put in place.
“Everybody sees that coming and I don’t think anybody has a good answer for that right now,” Cookman said. “There’s not a great deal of planning in place for how is the Afghan government going to take over operating and maintaining these programs after we leave.”
Patterson agreed.
“You need a lot of things which the typical Afghani doesn’t have…those are significant impediments to Afghani growth,” she said. “There are a lot more questions that are unanswerable then there are answers.”
