Letter to Activists and NGOs
Dear Colleague,
I am the founder of Jobs for Afghans, an advocacy group concerned with Afghanistan's 40% unemployment rate. Our mission is to encourage and assist in the creation of unskilled labor employment in Afghanistan on a large scale and in a short period of time. We believe the creation of one million jobs performing reconstruction-related tasks, which as you know there is no shortage of, at a wage of $10 per day and budgeted for a number of years, will provide the jump-start to the informal economy which Afghanistan so badly needs. We believe this is the key to deflating the insurgency.
We are lobbying for this by using the testimony of US military commanders themselves, such as Col. Tom Collins who told PBS Frontline:
"There is a low percentage of the total Taliban force who we would call ideologically driven. We refer to them as Tier 1 people who believe their ideology, that what they're doing is right. The vast majority of Taliban fighters are essentially economically disadvantaged young men."
General Eikenberry, former commander of US forces in Afghanistan, told the US Congress in 2007: "Much of the enemy force is drawn from the ranks of unemployed men looking for wages to support their families."
With testimony like this coming from the military establishment itself, with the recent creation of USAID's Special Inspector General for the Afghanistan Reconstruction, with the entrance of a new American presidential administration, and finally, with news of the botched reconstruction and the rapidly deteriorating situation in Afghanistan becoming a regular feature in mainstream news, we believe the political climate is right for a push to correct the course. What is needed is a transformation of generalized rhetoric calling for "economic growth" and strong "pillars" of society into policy which creates real jobs for real Afghans.
As you know Afghanistan doesn't need luxury hotels and shopping malls for drug lords. It needs pipeline infrastructure for clean drinking water, for irrigation, for sewage transport. It needs rural gravel roads and other applications of appropriate technology, clinics with generators and the most basic medical supplies, and other things to alleviate the utter misery of most Afghans after a full eight years of Western intervention. People we talk to in America are shocked to learn that the Taliban pays $8 a day and is the closest thing to steady, always-available employment. The mighty United States, which can put $100 billion on the ground in Iraq every year, is being outbid for the services of young men by a Taliban which can raise perhaps $1 billion from the narco economy, not a small number but certainly not beyond the resources of the US to compete with.
We are writing to invite your comments on congressional legislation we are proposing which will govern the expenditure of USAID dollars. In addition to legislation, we believe our goals may also be obtained through the issuance of executive order from the Obama administration. The legislation or executive order shall state that:
1) Requests for proposals from vendors bidding for contracts from USAID shall require a job-creation component, in which contractors shall describe the number of jobs for Afghan nationals will be created by the project, plans for the substitution of labor for capital equipment whenever feasible, and plans for the maximization of capacity-building in skills for Afghan nationals. In bid submissions such components shall be weighted at 20 percent of points for awarding contract. Bid evaluation of pricing shall be exclusive of the additional costs of job-development components, so that aggressive job-creation components are not penalized.
2) Subcontractors to the principle contractor shall not be exempt from job-creation requirements, and shall report any data required to the office of the Inspector General of USAID.
3) Overhead for the subcontracting of work to further subcontractors shall not exceed five-percent.
4) USAID shall prioritize rural road, water, electricity, irrigation, and medical clinic projects, at the provincial and district level, in coordination with the development plans of the appropriate Afghan government ministry.
5) USAID shall set a target of the one million new jobs by June 2009, which can be performed by unskilled labor from Afghan nationals, and shall coordinate bids for work in a manner consistent with the achievement of this goal.
As congressional legislation, we believe the above language would be inserted in Title 22, Chapter 82, subchapter I § 7516, in a new section "g," governing USAID assistance to Afghanistan.
Monitoring shall be accomplished by inserting as follows into H.R.1535, section 1229 (f)(1):
(A) the oversight and accounting of the obligation and
expenditure of such funds; [INSERT: according to guidelines enumerated in Title 22, Chapter 82, subchapter I § 7516, section "g."]
(B) the monitoring and review of reconstruction activities
funded by such funds; [INSERT: according to guidelines enumerated in Title 22, Chapter 82, subchapter I § 7516, section "g."]
(C) the monitoring and review of contracts funded by
such funds; [INSERT: according to guidelines enumerated in Title 22, Chapter 82, subchapter I § 7516, section "g."]
We would also like to ask if you would be so kind as to circulate among your colleagues in the NGO community who join us in our criticism of the Afghan reconstruction. Our goal is to arrive at a draft statement co-signed as many as possible in the NGO community which will urge the US government to set policy which will create many jobs for Afghans. It is unfortunate that the political opening which now presents itself is a result of shortsightedness which now has the Taliban at the outskirts of Kabul. But as the noted scholar Ahmed Rashid said: "It is still not too late for the Americans to reverse course: the majority of the Afghan population has no desire to return to Taliban rule. What gains the Taliban have made can be attributed to fear and intimidation – and the inability of the Kabul government to provide security and economic development."
A one-million-$10-per-day job surge in Afghanistan would be the fiscal stimulus needed to put money into the hands of those who will build Afghanistan's future: the Afghan people. This would be similar to the tax rebates in the US used to stimulate growth, albeit this would be much more effective, as economic conditions in Afghanistan fall in the precise region where economists say such stimulus is most effective: excess-labor, low-inflation, slack-industrial-capacity conditions.
As we know, Afghans are enterprising people, and savers who will buy a taxi or a produce stand given a chance. They are outstanding traders and small businessmen. But to pull ones-self up by the bootstraps first there must be bootstraps. Let us change the direction of this war. If the Afghan people and the American people can come together in equal friendship, it will be an historic breakthrough in the history of this terribly troubled region, whose people have so long been tormented by war and conquest. When this happens, the world will be a much safer place.
Sincerely,
Ralph Lopez
Founder
Jobs for Afghans
http://jobsforafghans.org/
Appendices:
- Draft letter to Congress
-Link and to FY2008 legislation creating the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction Office:
http://frwebgate.access.gpo.
-Link to Title 22, Chapter 82, subchapter I § 7516:
http://www4.law.cornell.edu/
- Recent op-ed, "The War Which Should Have Been Over"
Post a Comment