--- title: Can Afghanistan Survive Without Foreign Aid? | TIME description: Some 90% of the money in and around Afghanistan is coming from the United States and its allies - but is it creating a dependency that will be tough to break? canonical: https://time.com/video/jho9qdHg/ og:title: Can Afghanistan Survive Without Foreign Aid? og:description: Some 90% of the money in and around Afghanistan is coming from the United States and its allies - but is it creating a dependency that will be tough to break? og:url: https://time.com/video/jho9qdHg/ og:image: https://cdn.jwplayer.com/v2/media/jho9qdHg/poster.jpg?width=720 og:type: video.other twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: Can Afghanistan Survive Without Foreign Aid? twitter:description: Some 90% of the money in and around Afghanistan is coming from the United States and its allies - but is it creating a dependency that will be tough to break? twitter:image: https://cdn.jwplayer.com/v2/media/jho9qdHg/poster.jpg?width=720 --- # Can Afghanistan Survive Without Foreign Aid? > Sponsored content. 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They are at time.com/newsletters and are separate from a paid subscription. ## Video: Can Afghanistan Survive Without Foreign Aid? [Watch (HLS stream): Can Afghanistan Survive Without Foreign Aid?](https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/jho9qdHg.m3u8) (4:43)  _Published 2011-10-24. Some 90% of the money in and around Afghanistan is coming from the United States and its allies - but is it creating a dependency that will be tough to break?_ --- Jul 27, 2023 3:18 PM UTC --- ## More From This Series [All Videos](https://time.com/video/) [Animals in Afghanistan Survive Conflict](/video/dAk1gCmZ/) ### Animals in Afghanistan Survive Conflict [Photographing the Birds of Hope: An Army Medevac Unit in Afghanistan](/video/apI4BHOD/) ### Photographing the Birds of Hope: An Army Medevac Unit in Afghanistan [Afghanistan's Bodybuilding Champions](/video/dwvgQ7dG/) ### Afghanistan's Bodybuilding Champions --- ## Transcript This is Command Post. A series of discussions about military matters from Time. And, The Center for a New American Security. Steve, 90 % of the Afghan government revenues. In recent years, have come from the US and other donors. This is, Distorted the local economy. It has bred corruption in the Afghan central government. Is this any way to groom a nation to live on its own, in the out years? Well, President Karzai, periodically. Makes the counter argument, when we pressure him to clean up corruption. That a lot of the corruption was caused by the West. And, he's absolutely right. When you flood, one of the world's poorest developing countries. With this scale of money, in this short a time. Then, you create a huge scale problem for yourself. Which I, I think, at the moment, is at the very heart of the governance problem. That, we need to resolve, if we're gonna make any headway. One of the reasons why I'm pessimistic. That a simple strategy of hand off and withdrawal will work. Is because if we do, when we withdraw following the hand off. We're withdrawing most of the Afghan economy with us. And, not only, will we be burdening them with an ongoing war, of today's difficulty. We'll be doing it under a condition. In which, their own domestic economy. May be collapsing around their ears, at the time. But why do we do this, then? This seems so self- evident. Why do we flood a place like this with money? We tend, for a variety of reasons to be economic determinists. In the United States, in a fairly. You know, straightforward way. And, I think that the problem that we observed. In Afghanistan, and also, in Iraq for that matter. Is that they're all sorts of second and third order consequence's. Of trying to solve an insurgency problem this way. Money is needed. People are needed. Resources are needed. But, they're not the heart of the problem. The heart of the problem is understanding the incentive calculus. Of local political leadership, and changing it. Through outside leverage. To cause it to be something that's representative enough. Of the interests of the people that they're governing. That they can succeed, against an insurgency. Posing an alternative model of governance. That requires a lot more, than just, you know, raining doubloons from the sky. As, as, as we tended to do in Afghanistan. I think there's an absolute risk at this stage. That the Afghanistan that results from our 10 plus years there. Is a kleptocratic, narco- trafficking, security state. I'm worried that our own actions and our own strategies. Including counter- insurgency strategies. The way it's formulated, contributes to this inadvertently. I think, 10 years in this country. And, we still don't understand what makes these societies tick. It makes me, pessimistic about our possibilities of figuring that out. In the next two or three years and getting that right. Why is that so hard for us Bryan? I think, some of it was, the local language. And, really understanding, sort of, who you're dealing with. Knowledge of the local culture, I think is, very important. From the rotation schedules of the military and the U. S. government. People going there for a year. Year and a half, sometimes with your State Department. You're there for 8 or 9 months. And then, you transition out and you hand it off. That's no way to develop, granular knowledge, that is required there. And then, at the end of the day, I'm thinking maybe not necessary to have this... Grand sort of pseudo- empire. Brian's raising a really critical point. Which is, what kind of Afghanistan, do we need when we leave. I think that the administration believe, and, I agree with them. That we can live with a much less ambitious Afghan political system. Than, we set out for. But, I think any sustainable afghan political system. Is going to have to be able to constrain the degree of official predation. On Afghan civilians. That we see now, and have contributed to, so mightily. With the way we've spent our own money, over time. Predation meaning theft? Effectively theft. It's kind of clothed in, nominally, legitimate government action. Because, crony networks control the government. And, they control the courts. And, they control the police. If we cannot resolve that. There is no imaginable end game for this. That will enable us to limit Taliban influence in post. US withdrawal, Afghanistan. If, if we don't get on with the business. Of dealing with the political side of the campaign in general. And especially, the problem of predatory activity. By malign actors in the country, in particular. Then, we're going to be in deep deep trouble. I have been, guardedly, optimistic about the conduct of this war. And, I remain so. But, that guarded optimism is premised on the assumption. That eventually, the political side of our strategy. Is going to catch up with the security side. And we're running out of time. 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