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Katja Mielke, a Research Fellow at the Center for Development Research (ZEF) of Bonn University, Germany, works on state-local interactions and aspects of development sociology in rural Afghanistan and Pakistan. She is currently finalizing her PhD thesis about Local Governance in northeast Afghanistan based on 14 months of field research in the region.
The NGO people drive around in big white cars, live in our cities’ best houses and receive high salaries, though most of them would be jobless in their own country. They come here for two, three hours, and we tell them what they need to hear. They express empathy with our difficult situation, and then they get back into their air-conditioned four wheel drives and race off leaving us behind in a cloud of dust. Often they are never seen again. —Farmers in rural Kunduz Province, 2006
