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US Assistance Challenges in Central Asia
by Nancy Lubin
Nancy Lubin is President of JNA Associates
Summary
A sober-minded assessment of Western aid programs over the past decade indicates that more effort needs to be put into adapting assistance projects to take account of local conditions. Formal political structures rarely reflect the way economy and society actually functions in the countries of the Caspian region. The penetration of law enforcement agencies by organized crime, for example, means that aid programs may actually be supporting the very forces that they are designed to counter. The answer is more thorough project assessment and evaluation, and more sensitivity to local cultures in the design and implementation of aid programs.
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Long term stability in Central Asia will be determined not only by energy and pipelines, but also by a host of other factors. The ability to develop mechanisms for sustained economic development; to reverse the corrosive impacts of rampant corruption and crime; to address deep social and societal ills that contribute to unrest; and to foster the political systems that encourage long term stability are not "givens," no matter how much energy revenue begins to flow.
For most of the past decade since these countries became independent, an army of international and bilateral donors have provided a vast array of resources to encourage the development of stable and sustainable market-oriented democracies. The US is one of the key leaders, if not the key leader in these efforts. But increasingly, the
effectiveness of these programs themselves has become the focus of enormous debate.
Most of this debate has focused on broad strategic issues - that is, the need to sort out US priorities and interests, and design consistent strategies and policies, for a region in great flux. But perhaps the greater challenge is to ensure that these policies are implemented effectively on the ground. Despite some notable successes, many of the best-conceived policies and strategies have been so distorted or co-opted in the field that they risk becoming ineffective or counter-productive. After a brief note on overall US policy challenges in the region, therefore, the following paper focuses on some of the implementation problems and ways these might be addressed.
US Policy Challenges
Since gaining independence in 1991, the states of Central Asia have grown rapidly in importance to US national security, commercial, and foreign policy interests for a number of reasons. These include the region''s vast reserves of oil and gas, as well as gold and other natural resources, that have already attracted enormous US and international investment. They also include their geostrategic location at the intersection of Russia, China, India/Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Iran - all of which have recently raised increasingly complex foreign policy questions for the US - and fears of a spillover of an anti-Western Islamic "fundamentalism" into the region. They also include the role of these countries as a source and transit route for narcotics and possibly nuclear and other weapons of mass destruction and their components; their alleged ties to international terrorism and organized crime; the persistence of relatively corrupt and authoritarian governments that have fluctuated in their level of commitment to reform and raised new economic, political and human rights challenges along the way; and the vast environmental, religious, human rights, poverty, and other political and social pressures that have created a tinderbox that the smallest spark could ignite.
The challenges in addressing all of these issues have been growing. On the commercial side, investment has proved to be more complicated than envisioned just a few years ago. The many difficulties of investing in the region (such as corruption, limited infrastructure, the predominance of political over economic considerations in commercial decisions, increased competition, and political volatility) have raised serious questions among the wisdom of investing in this part of the world.
The level of trafficking in narcotics, weapons, and, allegedly, in other weapons of mass destruction materials has grown markedly in recent years. The potential for the spread of a political Islam has been fueled by Central Asian governments that may exaggerate the threat for political purposes; and it is exacerbated by the fact that the most explosive schisms may be found within the Islamic communities themselves rather than, as often believed, between a cohesive Muslim community and more secular governments. The well coordinated and tragic series of bombings in February 1999 in Tashkent, Uzbekistan - the country that many US officials have singled out as our "anchor of stability" in the region - are symptomatic of broader and more immediate pressures throughout the region that raise serious concerns about the potential volatility of the Central Asian and Caspian region as a whole.
US Policy Implementation
The thrust of US policy - to promote market democracies, conflict resolution, energy development, and security cooperation throughout the region - is basically on target to address these disparate interests and challenges. Strategies have been developed to help improve the investment climate and address these serious security and foreign policy concerns. Since 1992, the US has provided more that $1.5 billion in assistance to the five Central Asian states alone in order to help establish market economies and stable, democratic societies based on a rule of law. Significant additional funds have been provided through other agencies and international donors to help create effective border controls, non-proliferation programs, and training for local law enforcement to address the growing security threats head on.
But the devil is in the details, and the success with which these policies are implemented on the ground varies enormously.
Two years ago, JNA Associates released a report on Aid to the Former Soviet Union: When Less is More (1996). We noted then that our greatest challenge was not so much a question of what we do, but of how US initiatives are carried out on the ground. We underscored in 1996, as now, that Central Asia is an exceptionally difficult region in which to work. For example, the continued centralized and monopolistic nature of these economies; the often tightly knit clan, family, ethnic, and religious structures; the persistence of authoritarian governments and a vacuum of alternative power sources; and the fact that local and national governments themselves, while supporting particular projects, often do not share US goals overall, have made conceptualizing and structuring assistance efforts extremely hard.
We also found that effective implementation was hindered from the US and Western side as well by a disconnection between program design and the day-to-day realities of the region. Implementation also suffered from the lack of regional expertise on the part of donors; inadequate attention to implementation and follow-up of programs; and limited coordination among programs, among other factors. We found that while some programs were quite successful, implementation was, at best, uneven.
At the request of two private foundations, we are now completing an update of that study. Our preliminary results to date are mixed. On the one hand, we have found that many US programs that we praised back then have continued to evolve quite positively. Programs highlighted in our first report - such as the Eurasia Foundation, IREX, ISAR, the International Tax and Investment Center, and others - continue to work effectively on the ground. This is partly because, for the most part, they are staffed with regional as well as technical experts; are flexible and able to shift priorities where appropriate; and have a presence on the ground that allows them not only to exert oversight and effectively implement programs, but also to conduct effective follow-up after projects, or components of projects, have been completed.
We also found that, consistent with our recommendations in 1996, there is greater discussion today about the need to fund non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and encourage civic society throughout Central Asia. There appears to be a greater effort to coordinate the work of NGOs with that of broader business and aid communities (for example, the ISAR and Eurasia Foundation programs in the Caspian region). And a number of reports - by GAO, USAID, and others - are currently under way to assess lessons learned from our aid programs in Central Asia over the past seven years.
Implementation Problems
While much has changed, many of the problems we identified three years ago remain; just as new challenges have emerged that significantly undermine US policy in the region. For example, in 1996, we highlighted the need to fit US assistance to the Central Asian context. We noted that problems in this region are often misdiagnosed because Western donors and investors do not take into account the political nuances and informal economies of Central Asia itself. Our current investigation suggests that this problem remains large. Too often, programs are designed based on official data and organizational charts that have little to do with how these countries function in practice. In societies where such a vast part of the economy occurs under the table, and where respect for the law is low, these programs have been criticized by local analysts as inadvertently empowering the very corrupt structures they are ostensibly intended to reform.
Thus, Western training programs in, for example, the rule of law are viewed locally with widespread skepticism when they fail to address the structure of a system where justice is typically bought and sold. Programs designed to restructure the management of resources have moved slowly not because the ministries do not understand what is needed, but because they often have more to lose than to gain from the way programs are structured. Loan packages for Central Asia''s rural areas - where the vast majority of the population lives - have threatened to backfire by relying on official data and organizational charts. Descriptions of how these structures (banks, local political authorities, etc.) actually work in practice and of alternative data have led to total redesigns of programs. And the business and foreign policy communities have likewise found the best of deals turned on their heads, not because their counterparts do not understand what is in their own interest, but because their interests are often so different from our own.
Part of the reason for these deficiencies is a common lack of Western regional expertise in projects and the "stove-piping" fashion in which assistance programs are administered. While these practices may be practical administratively, we have found that programs run the risk of being implemented in so piecemeal a fashion, that they are pursued without regard to the broader context in which they are carried out.
We are frequently asked by locals whether Western advisors understand the broader economic, social, political, ethnic, and other ramifications of their assistance. In one instance, for example, Central Asian analysts believed that US assistance to institute new taxes and beef up tax collection in one Central Asian state would result in closing the last remaining safety valves that allow poor villagers to make ends meet. They believed this could lead, potentially, to unrest. During the course of our investigation, we asked key personnel from a wide range of projects in the field - tax reform, privatization, and other areas - what they believed the broader societal impact of their assistance might be, particularly in terms of reducing or exacerbating the potential for conflict. All responded that they had not assessed that issue, as it was not part of their mandate. Whether or not these programs make sense, it is critical to assess their potential broader impacts before they begin, and to continue to do so during the life of the project.
Another shortcoming that has remained a deficiency in our programs is the need for greater follow-up of programs on the ground, and more effective monitoring to measure success. Many aid officials tell us that they are supported in their efforts to create new programs and projects, but that they are not provided the resources to staff them properly on the ground and conduct follow-up. And few have developed short term, measurable benchmarks that can provide a qualitative sense of whether or not they are on the right track. Without sufficient oversight or follow-up, we have found that we ourselves cannot monitor our own effectiveness and adjust programs accordingly, and that aid programs run the risk of being co-opted, or failing through theft, corruption, or otherwise a dissipation of assets and perversion of program goals and objectives.
These and other shortcomings may be particularly worrisome regarding US and international law enforcement efforts in Central Asia - where the stakes may be highest in terms of affecting long-term stability. Our research over the past 20 years has documented that in all of these countries, law enforcement has always enjoyed the position of one of the most corrupt sectors of society, and this has not changed with the independence of these new states. In a survey we conducted in the mid 1990s, the vast majority of the survey''s more than 2,000 respondents in Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan accepted pervasive corruption in law enforcement and government as a matter of course. Close to two thirds of respondents said that, as a rule, high government officials are either themselves members of the "mafia" or closely tied to the mafia. Almost 30 percent of the police in our expert survey said that, as a rule, their fellow cops are closely tied to organized crime. And half of all survey respondents said that bribery occurs as a matter of course in the courts and procurement as well.
Senior law enforcement officials, moreover, may be worse than their troops. From the Soviet deputy minister of internal affairs who headed one of the most important criminal networks in Central Asia during the "cotton scandal" of the 1980s, to the alleged drug smuggling operations of Tajikistan''s former minister of internal affairs, law enforcement officials may not just be complicit in criminal activities, but often run the "rackets" and criminal groups themselves. Allegations abound throughout Central Asia concerning high law enforcement officials involved in a range of illegal money-making ventures with still little, if any, oversight of their operations.
Despite this backdrop, many, if not most Western programs are designed and implemented by law enforcement specialists with little prior experience in this part of the world, and thus rely heavily on the judgments of high law enforcement officials rather than any independent and informed assessments of their own. Participants in these efforts inform us that most law enforcement programs in Central Asia are not provided the resources to have a full time, in-country presence in the region; instead, they rely on US embassy staff - or the part-time spouses of embassy staff - who are already stretched thin with other embassy duties and/or have little knowledge of law enforcement and the country itself. Training programs are often designed and organized, and trainees are often selected, by local foreign service nationals with little independent vetting, while instructors are provided little support to ensure that their training fits the Central Asian context. Several US law enforcement officials involved in these programs have themselves expressed concern to us that they do not always know who they are training - and a few have expressed fear they may be training future criminals rather than effective law enforcement agents. With few funds available for follow-up, they say they are not provided the resources to evaluate how the training and the resources they provide are used.
The heavy narcotics trafficking that affects the entire Central Asian and Caucasus region is viewed by local leaders as well as Western observers as among the most destabilizing challenges facing this region. But there is also a great deal of fear locally that Western programs may inadvertently be making these challenges worse. The UN Drug Control Program - a project to strengthen interdiction capacities through regional law enforcement cooperation in the Ferghana Valley - is typical of programs that have generated such concerns. Observers fear that because the program design focuses so heavily on the technology of combating narcotics trafficking and ignores the informal workings of these societies (including law enforcement) there will be little political will to use this equipment as intended. Locals still joke about the highly trained drug-sniffing dogs that were provided by the European Union to Kyrgyz law enforcement - all of which died mysteriously within five months of their arrival in Central Asia. The deaths were attributed to the harsh climate; but locals are sure the dogs were killed because local law enforcement did not want this capability. These and other programs have engendered a great deal of skepticism and criticism on the ground that we inadvertently may be providing "how to" courses to the very smugglers we are hoping to eradicate.
Recommendations
These and other examples are intended to trigger more attention to questions of policy implementation as well as to the policy challenges the US faces in the Central Asian region as a whole. The following recommendations are but examples of the type of fine tuning that may help to ensure that policy is implemented more effectively on the ground. These include:
Political Impact Statements. To encourage a better fit with the Central Asian context, all assistance projects should be required to submit detailed "political impact statements" - similar to the environmental impact statements required of corporations and government agencies before embarking on new ventures, and open to public scrutiny - before embarking on new assistance ventures. Assessments of these impacts should also be part of all evaluations during and after completion of projects.
Greater Inclusion of Regional Experts. In our 1996 report, we asserted that to reform and transform a society it is critical to include specialists with an intimate understanding of what it is we are trying to transform. This does not mean knowledge of language or culture alone. Instead, it means understanding how these countries function informally: i.e., what happens under the table; what happens above; whose interests are where, personally, institutionally, nationally; and how to shape our own programs so that they will be effective. This should be required of all US programs and all international programs supported by US tax dollars.
Follow-up. More resources should be provided for effective follow-up and a continued presence on the ground for all programs, perhaps particularly regarding law enforcement efforts. Only through close monitoring by regional experts can we assess how our training is being utilized and its broader social, economic, and political ramifications. Congress should mandate such follow up and require the GAO and each agency''s inspector general to annually assess the success of these aid programs.
Long-term and consistent funding. Congress should ensure that more long term and consistent funding is provided in a timely way for programs that work. The annual, if not more frequent negotiations for basic funding that NGOs and smaller projects in particular must undergo - as well as the long delays in receiving funds, often until half way through the fiscal year - seriously undermine work that the donor community has so widely praised.
Common standards. Similar standards should be applied to all international donors funded in part with US taxpayer contributions. Congress should ensure that particular attention is also directed to the role and functioning of international organizations - such as UN agencies, the Asian Development Bank, the World Bank, and others - as well as US agencies in providing assistance to Central Asia. To the extent that US funding and personnel are involved, the success or failure of their programs often reflect as much on local perceptions of the US as do our own.
Conclusion
In conclusion, it is worth underscoring that many of the above comments are not limited to the Central Asian states alone. Similar criticisms have been directed, for example, toward US and Western law enforcement training programs throughout the former Soviet Union. We have been advised that even the FBI does not properly "vet" the students from the former Soviet Union at its training center in Budapest nor conduct extensive follow up. But the ramifications for the Central Asian region today may be quite different from elsewhere in the former USSR.
Today, Central Asia continues to emerge as a region which Secretary of State Madeleine Albright has described as "critical to our own long-term security and prosperity." But it now stands at a difficult juncture. Despite seven years of US assistance in Central Asia, many of our programs are still relatively in their infancy. It would be far cheaper, easier, and wiser to fine-tune the way they are implemented today than to find out further down the road, as perhaps we did in Russia, that these same programs may have inadvertently crippled our ability to affect fundamental reform in this strategic region rather than enhanced it.
I would like to acknowledge the generous support of the Carnegie Corporation, W. Alton Jones Foundation, and other foundations and donors in the investigation of these issues. The paper is based on Congressional testimony provided in spring, 1999. The views, of course, are my own.