Changes will take center stage in Afghanistan in 2014 and 2015. The Middle Eastern country will hold presidential and parliamentary elections, and international troops will withdraw, taking with them international aid. But maybe the exit of an international presence in Afghanistan isn't a bad thing.
Karim Merchant lived and worked in Afghanistan for 14 years and helped develop some of the country's largest community and governmental development programs. Tuesday night, Merchant offered about 35 members of the DePauw community an insider's perspective on how the international aid the United States and other countries sent to Afghanistan during its economic and governmental struggles hurt the country more then helped it.
Merchant explained that instead of trying to help the Afghan people succeed in the long term, many countries, including the United States, tried to fix problems in a more short-term manner. This, he explained, ended up wasting billions of dollars in the long run.
"The sort of activities that were being focused on were blatantly political and blatantly short-term" Merchant said, "but the approach didn't change for a number of years."
According to Merchant, one of the tactics used by the United States was to give a bag full of money to warlords in exchange for information. This, he said, gave these warlords power that they could ultimately use to further disrupt Afghan progress.
"They thought they could buy their way out of it," he said. "It just didn't work... You can always rent an Afghan, but you can't buy them."
Merchant set much of the blame for Afghanistan's inability to get back on its feet on international aid not being as helpful as it should have been. He indicated an instance when the United States provided the Afghan people with an immediately plantable agricultural package which the U.S. promised to buy. The intention was to have the Afghan people begin commercial farming so that they could sustain themselves.
However, the seeds arrived a month later than they should have, making it harder for them to grow, and the wrong type of seed was sent. This international incompetency, Merchant said, happened a lot to the Afghan people, and it stirred up a lot of tension.
"The government was poor, its outreach was minimal, it wasn't terribly professional," he said. "At the same time, the international community contributed to that by not being able to coordinate, not being able to deliver in a timely manner."
However, Merchant also made a point to address the fact that Afghanistan has gone through many positive changes over the years. He gave statistics that represented this growth, including that six million children were enrolled in school in 2006, in contrast to the 1.7 million that were enrolled in 2001.
Sophomore Kate Porfilio was surprised by these positive advancements in Afghanistan. She explained that most American media does not weigh out the positives with the negatives.
"So much of my knowledge is just kind of through these really traditional, rhetorical themes that we feel in American media a lot," Porfilio said. "For me, [the talk] was an education, kind of realizing how many great things are going on in Afghanistan right now."
Rachel Goldberg, assistant professor of conflict studies, agrees with Porfilio, and thinks that there is a lot that the DePauw community can learn from people like Merchant.
"Afghanistan is an area that's critical for the United States, and it's extraordinary to have the opportunity to hear from somebody of his caliber," Goldberg said. "There just aren't that many people that have that kind of in-country knowledge."
In addition, Goldberg believes that DePauw students can benefit from Merchant's talk by seeing a real-life example of classroom application.
"We talk about problem solving, this is a guy who spends his life problem-solving," she said. "It's looking at what application looks like and what it can accomplish, and it can accomplish the transformation of a country."