The Foreign Service Journal, July/August 2018

THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL | JULY-AUGUST 2018 75 results. Through September 2017, the Afghanistan government had earned $330 million from 17 NDP programs promoting fiscal accountability, good governance and poverty alleviation. The approach has the benefit of increasing government ownership of its own reform agenda and rewarding development successes without the risks of funding government agencies directly. Strengthening Government Institutions One overriding objective of the international community in Afghanistan was to help build a sustainable, legitimate and rep- resentative government. This would be no small feat after almost three decades of civil war. In late 2001, Afghanistan labored under weak or nonexistent state institutions and a lack of trained civil servants. Significant support was needed to build or rebuild state institutions; to establish rules, systems and procedures; and to train Afghans at all levels to carry out essential governmental functions. Initially, donors, including USAID, had limited success in helping the Afghans build a skilled civil service workforce because the central government lacked the political will to address issues of patronage and corruption, to introduce reforms or set up a process for hiring employees based on qualifications. Today the political will exists, but donors need to do their part by harmonizing salaries, ensuring that remaining Afghan technical expert contractors are accountable to ministries and using clear metrics for judging performance. Good Afghan leadership is critical. A big part of the expla- nation as to why public financial management progressed far further and more quickly than civil service reform, why public health was more effective than agriculture and (in the early years) energy, was Afghan leadership. Better-performing ministries were better led and managed. Donors and technical assistance can do only so much if the government agency is corrupt or ineffective. In conflict and post-conflict countries, donors and govern- ments need to focus more on the core business functions of gov- ernment (i.e., human resources systems, financial management, procurement and independent internal audits), support reforms and keep the pressure on the government to be transparent and accountable. Oversight and Accountability Accountability is key in a country such as Afghanistan, with difficult travel, an ongoing conflict, huge donor aid budgets and a broad array of programs. That is one reason why Kabul has hosted multiple U.S. government oversight bodies. At one point, at least four oversight agencies had offices in the U.S. embassy