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Showing posts with label Rand; Zand; BRAC; MISFA; Microfinance Investment Support Facility for Afghanistan; AREU; Kabul Girl; Sogol Zand; FINCA. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Rand; Zand; BRAC; MISFA; Microfinance Investment Support Facility for Afghanistan; AREU; Kabul Girl; Sogol Zand; FINCA. Show all posts

Saturday, April 28, 2012

Aghan provincial governor's compound under attack: New commander faces challenge of winding down Afghanistan war

Updated 25 minutes ago
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KANDAHAR: The governor's compound in Afghanistan's southern Kandahar province came under attack Saturday.

At least one attacker was exchanging fire with Afghan security forces inside the compound, while a NATO helicopter was hovering overhead, the report said. (AFP) ============ New commander faces challenge of winding down Afghanistan war Tue, Dec 04 13:55 PM EST By David Alexander WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Marine Corps General Joseph Dunford, who takes over as head of international forces in Afghanistan next year, faces the challenge of winding down a war in a country where he has little experience using a strategy he did not devise. Dunford, whose nomination was confirmed by the Senate on Monday night, will be the fifth commander of the International Security Assistance Force since President Barack Obama took office, a leadership churn that worries Afghan war analysts. Friends and colleagues describe Dunford, the Marine Corps assistant commandant, as a calm and thoughtful leader who earned the nickname "Fighting Joe" on the battlefields of Iraq by creating conditions for success with careful planning and harmonious execution. But analysts expressed mixed views on his selection to replace Marine Corps General John Allen. Some worry about the No. 2 Marine's lack of experience in Afghanistan and his vocal support for President Barack Obama's plan to withdraw most U.S. forces by the end of 2014. That could make him reluctant to ask for more time and troops if conditions on the ground are not right for a stable transition, they say. But others contend that after a dozen years of war, Dunford's job is to execute the strategy he has been given, not reinvent it. And while he may be able to suggest some adjustments to the plan, he has very little room for maneuver as members of the 46-nation coalition edge toward departure. "The problem is at this point nobody is going to fight it. It's the strategy. It's not his choice," said Anthony Cordesman, a defense analyst at the Center for Strategic and International Studies think tank. "For good or evil, the question is: How does he manage the shift towards an exit." "FIGHTING JOE" Dunford, a Boston native, is a 35-year veteran of the Marines. He was commissioned as an officer in 1977 and he served as a platoon and company commander for several years before moving to administrative roles. He holds two master's degrees and is a graduate of the elite Army Ranger School. As the United States moved toward war with Iraq in 2003, Dunford - then a colonel - found himself in the First Marine Expeditionary Force serving as commander of Regimental Combat Team 5, the unit that would lead the U.S. invasion, seize the Rumaila oil fields and then head toward Baghdad. When officials advanced the timing of the invasion by a day, Dunford had his forces ready to move in three hours. He kicked off the assault with a nighttime crossing of the 10-foot berm and anti-tank ditch separating Iraq and Kuwait, moving in darkness rather than at dawn as initially planned. "He earned the Fighting Joe title by his actions during Operation Iraqi Freedom, when he led the initial attack into Iraq (crossing the berm on the accelerated timeline) and leading all the way to Baghdad," said General James Mattis, the head of U.S. Central Command, who was Dunford's commander in Iraq. "He's not flashy, but he's the fighter - one I could always count on when the going got difficult," Mattis said in an email. "He is tactically cunning and does a superb job at setting his subordinate commanders up for success by orchestrating complex battle plans into harmonious actions." Congressman Duncan Hunter, who served in the Marines in Iraq and occasionally had a chance to interact with Dunford, said the commander was seen as "a decisive leader who was well-respected by subordinates and peers throughout the chain of command." "In a stressful, combat environment he proved himself to be an accomplished and energetic warrior," Hunter said in an email. Since the war Dunford has moved rapidly up the chain of command. He became a brigadier general in 2004, was selected to become a major general in December 2007 and then promoted to lieutenant general two months later, before Congress had acted to confirm his second star. "That in itself will give you an idea of how he was seen in the Marine Corps," said Marine Colonel David Lapan, a spokesman for the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who has worked for Dunford and been his neighbor. He has a "great reputation as a combat commander, as an operational commander, very even-keeled, measured, analytical," Lapan said. While his combat experience is not in Afghanistan, the differences are not that great and he can bring a fresh perspective to the situation, Lapan said. SOME QUESTIONS But some Afghan war analysts are concerned about Dunford's appointment, saying his support for Obama's withdrawal strategy will make it difficult for him to adjust the drawdown based on conditions on the ground. "He was in a very small minority among senior military officers in articulating that President Obama's Afghanistan strategy and the notion of firm deadlines could work," said Michael Rubin, a defense analyst at the American Enterprise Institute. "He has never explained ... how or why he thinks it could work." Dunford will have to guide international forces through a series of critical milestones over the coming two years, starting with Afghan forces taking over the lead role for the country's security next summer. The presidential election in the spring of 2014 is viewed as essential to ensuring Afghan support for the government once international forces withdraw. And Dunford also must manage the drawdown of U.S. and international forces and the transition to full Afghan control by the end of 2014. "All too often when officials talk about the transition, they just talk in terms of numbers and the actual Afghans doing security and fighting," Rubin said. "But to really have transition and independence, you need a lot in the background." Afghan National Security Forces still lack important specialty skills, from intelligence, logistics and communications to maintenance, engineering and accounting, he said. Medical support is a "huge example." "When we're fighting with the Afghans and the Afghans get wounded, we triage them, evacuate them, that sort of thing. They have no capability of that on their own. We haven't focused on it in transition," Rubin said. Ultimately the issue is whether withdrawal from Afghanistan will take place as Afghan security forces acquire the skills they need to defend the country, or whether it will move ahead according to a political timeline, he said. "Most generals are looking at the capabilities," Rubin said. "Dunford is the exception. He appears to be looking at the politics." But Cordesman said Dunford's job in Afghanistan is to execute the policy approved by the White House, the Pentagon and NATO and he has little flexibility in the matter. "The purpose of a commander is not to tell the president what to do," he said. "The purpose of a commander is to do the task he's assigned as well as he possibly can." He said he believed Dunford would be able to "tell the president bad news or make recommendations that indicated we had to change the way in which we exit ... or the timing." "This is certainly not somebody who would simply accept or follow orders regardless of conditions," he said. "But it is obvious that no commander at this point is going to come in ... charged with reexamining and reinventing the strategy." (Editing by Cynthia Osterman) =======

Monday, December 27, 2010

REFILE-Microfinance faces hurdles in empowering Afghan women

28 Dec 2010

Source: reuters // Reuters


(Corrects name from "Rand" to "Zand", paragraph 16)

* Afghan micro loans face religious challenges

* Failure to repay can trigger domestic violence

By Michelle Nichols

KABUL, Dec 28 (Reuters) - In a dimly lit room at the back of an Afghan house, 21-year-old Zahara is crouched on a plank of wood weaving a large carpet on a loom that she was able to buy using a microfinance loan of $1,100.

Zahara started weaving carpets when she was 10 and did not go to school, but the loan from non-profit development group BRAC allowed her to start her own business about 18 months ago and she has since taken out two more loans of $330 each.

"When I first got the money, the carpets I was making were small and now I can make bigger carpets," said Zahara, who heard about microfinance loans from her neighbour in Kabul. "Before I made carpets for other people and now I make them for myself."

More than 1.5 million loans worth $831 million have been given out in the past seven years, said the Microfinance Investment Support Facility for Afghanistan (MISFA), which was set up by the government in 2003 to coordinate the sector.

Thirty years of conflict have shattered Afghanistan's economy and infrastructure, leaving two-thirds of the roughly 30 million population illiterate and at least a third in dire poverty.

Aside from security fears, microfinance is facing a shortage of skilled people to run programmes, as well as challenges in reaching sparsely populated rural areas and religious concerns among conservative Muslims about paying interest.

"If you talk to the real villagers, they need money," said Fazlul Hoque, head of non-profit development group BRAC in Afghanistan, which is responsible for half the country's 430,000 microfinance clients. "We need to establish a credit culture."

Unlike traditional bank loans which require paperwork such as proof of identification and income, many microfinance lenders simply require borrowers to become part of a support group and verify their ability to repay.

The average annual income in Afghanistan is $370, according to the World Bank. But Hoque said the default rate on BRAC loans was low, around 3 or 4 percent.


WOMEN NEED MORE THAN CREDIT

Microfinance -- developed more than 30 years ago by Bangladeshi economist Muhammad Yunus, who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2006 for his efforts -- traditionally targets women. MISFA said 60 percent of current Afghan clients are women.

"Women are ignored, so one of our social missions is to bring them out, so that there will be a kind of dignity of women, they can have a better position in the family," said Hoque, adding that more than 80 percent of BRAC's clients were women.

But the independent Afghanistan Research and Evaluation Unit (AREU) said it would take more than access to microfinance to empower women and build their social status.

"Credit can be a means to assist women to achieve more decision-making power and autonomy, but there needs to be a purposeful, culturally attuned strategy in place to support this process," said Paula Kantor, an AREU visiting researcher and former director of the unit.

There are enduring limits on women's rights across Afghanistan more than nine years after the strict Islamist Taliban were ousted after more than five years in power, during which women were made to wear all-covering burqas and were rarely allowed out in public for education or work.

A U.N. report earlier this month found that millions of Afghan women and girls suffer from traditional practices such as child marriage and "honour" killings, and that authorities are failing to enforce laws protecting them.

AREU senior research officer Sogol Zand has been studying microfinance and gender in Afghanistan and said that when a loan helped improve a family's economic situation it reduced domestic violence, but when a family found it difficult to repay their loan, the violence increased.

Microfinance also faces a religious hurdle because Islamic law prohibits the payment or acceptance of interest fees. Some microfinance organisations try to work around this by calling an interest payment an administrative or service charge.

MISFA is working to develop a loan that would be compliant with Islam, while some smaller microfinance groups such as FINCA, which has about 9,000 Afghan clients, already offer such loans.

"There are indeed a number of Afghans who do not participate in mainstream microfinance ... for fear of social pressure," said MISFA Managing Director Katrin Fakiri. "Potential borrowers must have a choice between Islamic or conventional loans."


LACK OF SKILLS, KNOWLEDGE

Fakiri said the Afghan microfinance sector was consolidating to ensure it grows responsibly and to address its challenges, the most obvious of which was poor security limiting expansion.

"What makes this worse is the fact that many government entities at the regional level have no adequate knowledge of microfinance, its social mission and the fact that it is a government-supported national programme," Fakiri said. "As a result, support for microfinance on the ground is weak."

But the biggest problem was finding people with the skills to run the programmes. Fakiri and Hoque said a lack of educated staff created other issues such as mismanagement, miscommunications and misperceptions.

Fakiri said MISFA was educating local government and microfinance staff about the sector and had teamed up with the Central Bank of Afghanistan, the Afghanistan Banking Association and international donors to create the Afghanistan Institute of Banking and Finance, which offers a basic microfinance course.

Safia, 32, took out a BRAC small business loan for 70,000 Afghanis ($1,555) so she could improve her beauty shop in the Kabul neighbourhood of Polisukhta. A large vase with fake pink flowers adorns the window of Stara Beauty Parlor, where Safia and her employee do hair and make-up.

Safia had to ask permission from her husband to get the loan, but said her success had earned her more respect from him.

Posters of heavily made-up women with elaborate hairstyles decorate the shop walls and a thin curtain in the front window hides customers from people passing on the busy street outside.

"When I got the money it helped me to do a lot of work in my shop," said Safia, a mother of two. "I will be able to make an independent future." (Additional reporting by Hamid Sayedi; Editing by Paul Tait and Nick Macfie) (If you have a query or comment about this story, send an e-mail to news.feedback.asia@thomsonreuters.com)