The Relationship between Aid, Insurgency & Security [Part Two]

This report is the second in a series addressing the relationship between foreign aid and security in Afghanistan. The first report in this series focused primarily upon the statistical correlation between development assistance and levels of insurgent violence. While its findings were nuanced, the research outlined in the first report suggested that reconstruction and development assistance – while commonly viewed as a means of countering insurgency – may actually be correlated with greater numbers of insurgent attacks. Case study evidence from the Feinstein International Center [FIC] at Tufts University cited in the first report also suggested that, in Afghanistan, aid had a negligible or perhaps negative impact upon levels of insurgent violence.

This second report focuses more upon Afghanistan than the first report in this series and moves away from statistical correlations. Rather, it presents various explanations that have been developed by leading analysts and researchers for why security in Afghanistan has decreased sharply while development assistance increased markedly. The goal of this report is primarily to identify ways in which the reconstruction and development strategy relates to the intensity and scale of the conflict. The following issues are examined: [i] the congruence between Afghans' priorities and the allocation of development assistance, [ii] the relationship between aid and governance, including corruption, and [iii] the potential for aid funding to have inadvertently financed insurgent groups. Read more