Originally posted December 2009
Originally posted December 2009
Originally posted December 2009
Often, policy debates on the empowerment of women in Afghanistan are impaired by the historic backlashes against radical top-down reforms and women’s emancipation (e.g., unseating kings) or by the assumption that the male-dominated culture makes it nearly impossible to create space for the advancement of women’s rights. As a result, the effort to develop a cohesive strategy for enhancing women’s participation in the reconstruction agenda is hampered.
Originally posted December 2009
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
Originally posted December 2009
Originally posted December 2009
Originally posted December 2009
Originally posted December 2009
It is a difficult task to suggest a specific recipe for the improvement of the economy of any failed state. The case of Afghanistan presents even more challenges.
The Magnitude of the Challenge
Originally posted December 2009
Originally posted December 2009
Originally posted December 2009
Originally posted December 2009
Originally posted December 2009
A hasty, fluid, and poorly conceived process of creating leadership in a post-war situation mainly provides the space for rich and powerful — mostly corrupt — individuals to prevail because their roles, styles, and abilities overshadow concerns about their background, characteristics, homogeneity, and behavioral patterns.[1] Regrettably, such is the case in post-Taliban Afghanistan.
