Khan Neshin: The governor of this remote district in southern Afghanistan has employees he can't afford to pay, a school he struggles to staff with teachers, a clinic where doctors are scarce and a police force of mostly illiterate farmers.
That's actually progress in an impoverished area that had no school, doctor, police or even a governor before U.S. Marines arrived about six months ago.
Building up local government is key to improving people's lives and winning their support against the Taliban. The experience in Rig district in Helmand province, a crossroads for Taliban fighters entering from nearby Pakistan, highlights just how difficult that challenge can be.
"Right now it is a race between us and the Taliban," said Lt. Col. Richard Crevier, whose battalion is posted in a 200-year-old mud fort in Khan Neshin.
The dusty district town is typical of many areas of Afghanistan that have little history of strong government presence. Where the state's influence is felt, it's often not for the better. Many officials use their positions to enrich themselves rather than deliver basic services.
The Taliban have capitalized on people's grievances by setting up shadow governments in many parts of Afghanistan's volatile south that in some ways function more efficiently than the real thing, although they are based on the group's strict interpretation of Islam.
The Marines and civilian development officials in Khan Neshin are trying to bypass the corruption and inefficiency at higher levels of government by working directly through the district governor, Massoud Balouch, a 27-year-old former pharmacist who sacrificed a comfortable life in the provincial capital to run one of Afghanistan's impoverished areas.
"If there were more people like me, Afghanistan would build itself faster," said Balouch.
But coalition officials have discovered that even a capable and well-intentioned local leader can get hamstrung by corruption at higher levels of government, a shortage of educated Afghans and the threat that the Taliban will target those who cooperate with the development effort.
In a country where the literacy rate is only about 30 percent, Balouch has had trouble recruiting competent staff willing to work in a remote district of only about 20,000 people for practically nothing.
It's a problem the U.N. says also plagues provincial governments.
"We train 1,700 people, then ask them to go back to their provinces to work," said the head of the U.N. mission in Afghanistan, Kai Eide. "And they say, 'For $60, $70, $80 dollars a month? Why should we?'"
Bureau Report
First Published: Tuesday, December 22, 2009, 00:22