Navigating International Development in Conflict Zones: Applying Lessons from Afghanistan to current and future conflicts.

The UK's twenty-year engagement in Afghanistan revealed profound challenges in delivering development aid during an ongoing conflict. As a result, lessons learned in Afghanistan can provide valuable insights into the effectiveness and means of the UK’s delivery of development aid in ongoing and future conflicts. In 2021, Afghanistan remained the largest recipient of UK Bilateral ODA.[1] It received a total of £3.7 billion in UK development and humanitarian support since 2002.[2] However, the sudden collapse of the state and the return of the Taliban has triggered an economic crisis and the withdrawal of development aid. This has significantly escalated the urgency and demand for international humanitarian assistance. The swift return of the Taliban has underscored a systemic failure in international development, particularly in the areas of building resilient Afghan institutions, promoting peace and security, and preserving progress in the rule of law and human rights. There is an urgent need for parliamentary scrutiny to understand why substantial international aid failed to establish resilient institutions and foster modernisation and effective democracy. This is especially crucial for extracting broader lessons that can be applied to other recipients of UK bilateral ODA, such as Ukraine, the second-highest recipient of UK bilateral ODA.[3] The importance of this is heightened by the levels of international aid Afghanistan received, contributing to a ‘corruption eruption’, and combined with failed aid coordination policies, exacerbated the conflict and state collapse. Indeed, Afghanistan has given rise to the notion that, under certain conditions, ‘more is less’ when it comes to international aid.[4] There are already growing concerns in Washington D.C. that Ukraine could become another international aid 'sinkhole'. Immediate action is needed to prevent this from happening.[5] Parallels are being drawn between the effects of corruption, coordination challenges, monitoring and evaluation problems, and failure of multilateral oversight.[6]  Herein, broader lessons from Afghanistan have yet to be embedded in UK aid policy. Yet, questions over how the UK navigates its international development policy speak directly to issues of the UK’s strategic autonomy, the effectiveness of its aid strategies in conflict situations and its ability to coordinate with global partners to produce effective and contextually sensitive aid strategies.

Given that the international system is becoming more prone to conflict, it is important to scrutinise why aid to Afghanistan proved ineffective and ensure that past experiences inform tailored policies in future UK ODA funding. International development in conflict zones must be more sensitive to complex strategic realities. Analysing the UK's development interventions in Afghanistan to identify successes and failures would allow for more focused strategy formulation, implementation, and contextually aware outcomes. Such a framework would help examine the UK's ongoing development initiatives in Ukraine and evaluate their design, execution, and alignment with immediate humanitarian needs, long-term development goals and overall reconstruction. Indeed, Ukraine has serious corruption issues of its own[7], and questions over how to introduce better corruption controls with international partners are crucial, especially as they can undermine UK development objectives.

Dr Oz Hassan, Reader in National Security, Deputy Head of Department, Politics and International Studies, The University of Warwick

Have you ever engaged with Parliament before:

• Yes – Evidence Published in The FCO's human rights work in 2013 ; The UK's response to extremism and instability in North and West Africa

Do you have personal or field experience related to international development issues?

• Yes – Fieldwork for academic studies. I was also the author of the European Parliament’s Study [Hassan, Oz (2023) 'Afghanistan: Lessons learnt from 20 years of supporting democracy, development and security'Link opens in a new window, Requested by the European Parliament's Committee on Foreign Affairs (AFET), Policy Department for External Relations, Directorate General for External Policies of the Union, PE 702.579 - January 2023]

If you are invited to pitch your idea to the Committee, would you be able to travel to London and back within the same day?

• Yes.