1. INTRODUCTION

With a five-week Quality Project (QP) mission to Afghanistan already planned by URD prior to its appointment to the Global Study – a mission with 'participation' as one of its research items – the Global Study Steering Group agreed to a piggybacking arrangement whereby one extra person would be added to the 4-member QP specialist team. This would allow enhanced coverage of 'participation' issues in Afghanistan in general and a specific focus on the earthquake-affected area of Nahrin, as the first of the two Global Study sudden-onset case studies.

The Nahrin case study provided the opportunity to explore consultation and participation practices in the context of a sudden onset/natural disaster occurring within a complex, post-crisis situation following a protracted conflict. The hypotheses and questions behind this choice were:

• do aid agencies and the affected population develop a certain modus operandi based on participatory mechanisms in the context of dangerous protracted and often forgotten crises?
• the sudden changes in this type of context accompanying the transition from war to peace bring many new agencies with on the one hand new approaches and on the other hand little knowledge of, and few networks in, Afghanistan;
• is there a coherence in practices when aid agencies have to mobilise themselves when a sudden-onset disaster occurs in this type of context?

On an evening of March 2002, the earth started to shake in the Nahrin district of Baghlan province, bringing houses to the ground, killing hundreds, wounding thousands. Two days later, a second earthquake hit the area. After 20 years of war, 4 years of drought, and the recent departure of the Taliban leaving a trail of mines behind them, the people of Nahrin had had their share of difficulties. The international aid community, already mobilised throughout Afghanistan, responded quickly with mobile clinics being set up the morning after and food and tent distributions starting within a couple of days. Government officials, United Nations agencies, local and international NGOs were all present for the two weeks that followed the disaster. 5 months later, however, at the time of the Global Study mission, only a handful of aid actors were left. The combination of these factors made the Nahrin earthquake an interesting case study to include in the Global Study.

Afghanistan has been under the grip of war since 1979: from the invasion by the Soviet Union, to the civil war between the Mujahiddin in the early 1990s and the takeover of the Taliban, supported by Pakistan. The rural areas of provinces north-east of the Salang Pass have long been strongholds of the Mujahiddin groups from which they maintained a high level of insecurity in the main regional towns such as Taloqan (north of Nahrin) or Pul-e-Kumri (west of Nahrin). From their appearance in Kandahar in 1994 until 2001, when they controlled 90% of the country with a mere 10% under the control of Commander Masoud in the Panjsheer, the Taliban enforced a regime of religious and political repression.

The Nahrin area remained under Masoud’s control until a strong Taliban offensive in late 2000. Its position between the Salang Pass, the road to Mazar and the access roads to remote provinces in the North-East transformed this quiet countryside into a strategic target. During the American military intervention in Afghanistan following the events of September 11^th 2001, the fighting in the region was quite intense, as shown by the number of destroyed tanks and armoured vehicles. Nahrin finally fell into the hands of the Northern Alliance weeks before the fall of the regime in November 2001.

Since then, the international community has mobilised considerable resources for the country, and set out to establish a new government. An interim government was formed until the Lloya Jirga ("grand assembly") in June 2002, when a transition government was put in place under the presidence of Hamid Karzai. The presence of the international community (bi and multi-lateral donors, UN, NGOs, International Security Assistance Force, Coalition Forces, etc.) has greatly increased in Kabul, with an aim to bringing political stability to the country, building government capacity and responding to ongoing emergency needs. In remote rural areas such as Nahrin, however, the increase of international presence was at best marginal, at least until the earthquakes. The New Kabul government has very little control in the provinces and a limited presence in areas such as Nahrin.

Over 20 years of war have led to mass destruction of villages, cities, and infrastructure (roads, industry, irrigation networks, etc.), population displacements, and widespread mining, leaving the country in a chronic state of extreme poverty. A sizeable proportion of the Nahrin population migrated to the refugee camps in Pakistan. People started to come back in the early 90s. Much of the country was hit by 3 to 4 years of drought between 1998 and 2002, leading to further destitution and more population displacements. Though the drought had a less drastic impact in the Northeast than in other parts of the country, it has led many families to sell part of or all their assets (livestock and/or land) and become greatly indebted, compromising their food security for years to come.

In Nahrin, the earthquake led to a massive destruction of homes, hundreds of deaths and thousands of injuries. The population now faces the difficulty of rebuilding their homes before the winter and providing for their family. The mines left by the Taliban along access roads going to Taloqan and the Northern part of the country or on cultivable land, has further reduced access to land in certain valleys. The provision of humanitarian aid after the earthquake, though facilitated by the great increase in resources since September 2001, was complicated by the lack of visibility in the political situation, growing insecurity and the logistics difficulties characteristic of the Afghan terrain.

The Afghan population is composed of various ethnic groups. In the Baghlan province, one finds Tadjiks, Pashtuns and Uzbeks. Islam is a fundamental aspect of Afghan identity.

The traditional consultative processes inherent to the social organisation in Afghanistan are highly visible in Nahrin area. The unit of organisation varies according to the region, and can be the tribe, clan, the village, or the manteqa (group of villages). Decisions concerning the community are taken through discussion during the shurah (assemblies) where the male community members gather. These processes can be more or less representative of the whole community, depending on the influence and power of local leaders (maleks), who tend to be large landowners or commanders. Political legitimacy is obtained through the capacity to redistribute resources, such that the power structure is dynamic (depending on who has access to resources). Networks play a very strong role in this structure, in particular the qowm ("solidarity networks"), that tend to be based on kinship or geographic origin.

In Nahrin, the rural villages have a strong cohesion around their "white beards" (elders). The situation seems to be different in the urban centre of Nahrin itself due to the higher level of heterogeneity in the social setting, which is the result of the existence of the bazaar and the centre’s status as a "district town".

1. METHODOLOGY

The particularity of the Nahrin case study is that it explored in depth the issues of sector-related specificities in relation to participation. To shed additional light on the findings of the in-depth Global Study in the Nahrin area, the original 'Quality Project' team and their Afghan assistant fed back findings and data on consultation and participation from their visits to Kabul, Shamali/Panjsheer, Central Highlands, Mazar, Baghlan, Kandahar.

Methods used:

• interviews with key informants: local and international NGO staff who had been present in Nahrin during the earthquake emergency response (some interviewed in Kabul or Mazar) and/or are presently working there; local inhabitants and aid recipients;
• focus group discussions, formal and informal; organisation of two shuras (in two villages affected by the earthquake);
• participation in meetings between an agency and representatives of the local communities; and
• reading of secondary sources (assessment reports, evaluation of emergency intervention).

A feedback workshop was organised in Kabul, at the end of the mission, presenting firstly the results of the Quality Project and secondly, those of the Global Study. The workshop was attended by staff of local and international NGOs, UN agencies, ICRC, and donors. The present report is an interim report with the full Global Study Monograph due to be produced in the coming month.

In a context of war, repeated population displacement, widespread destitution, insecurity and collapse of the political and societal structures, the Afghan population has been receiving humanitarian aid for 2 decades. The difficulty of access to certain areas and population groups (e.g. women), the security constraints, the lack of funds and short funding timeframes, and the high turnover of agency staff, have not been conducive to long-term involvement and participatory processes. Top-down technical approaches have prevailed and are still common today, especially as many aid agencies present are new in the country and unfamiliar with the social and political characteristics of Afghan societies. This applies both countrywide and in the Nahrin area, a zone very difficult to access for many years with only one agency there for more than a year.

Before focusing specifically on Nahrin, it was important to review the existing approaches on consultation and participation prevailing in Afghanistan. Definitions and perceptions vary according to the informant. For some Afghans participation meant work (e.g. through Food for Asset Creation programmes) through which they contributed to the development of their community. For other informants participation was involvement in decision-making processes at various levels: from attendance in meetings to keep oneself informed and participation in discussions, to actual decision-making. One Afghan informant mentioned participation as being the capacity to solve problems, which entails a degree of empowerment.

International agency staff tended to emphasise the consultative aspects of participation in terms of needs assessments, programme design and monitoring; but devolving decision-making to local populations was barely mentioned. In some project documents, the use of local labour (e.g. for the cleaning of latrines in an IDP camp) was referred to as community involvement.

A distinction is to be made between "instrumental approaches", in which participation is used as a means to reach a project’s objectives, and "empowerment approaches", where the aim is to reinforce the community’ capacities to plan, organise, and implement what is seen as good for them. Most examples of participation seen in Afghanistan and all the examples analysed in Nahrin area were "instrumental", serving the purposes of projects pre-designed by aid agencies.

"Transformative approaches", in which participation is being used to trigger societal change and empower recipients is extremely rare, and mainly centred on "women’s participation". Only one example of a transformative approach was seen: the Community Forums of Habitat, which were created in 1995 in Mazar, and are now active in the major Afghan cities and Bamyan. Their purpose is to provide a "viable matrix for community-led development and self-governance" (B.J. Rodey, A Socioeconomic Evaluation of the Community Forum Programme, Feb. 2000, UNCHS Habitat). Each Community Forum (CF) is managed by a Consultative Board (CB), made of volunteers that are selected by the community (women are included). The fact that consultative processes are already built in traditional decision-making mechanisms may facilitate the establishment of such an approach. However, some questions are raised as to whether and how the CF may compete with traditional decision-making structures and whether the CB and CF are truly representative of the community in a given area. Nothing of that form was observed in Nahrin, neither inherited from before, or as a result of the post-earthquake international involvement in the area.

In Afghanistan in general, various forms of very interesting participatory mechanisms have been identified, as shown in Table 1. Nahrin was an interesting site to assess whether accepted or field-tested principles on participation are applied in the case of a rapid onset disaster or not.

In Nahrin, when asked about how the population had participated to the emergency response, most people noted that during the first few hours and days following the earthquake, the energy of individuals and communities was focused on finding people in the rubble and burying the dead. "Ninety percent of the people were victims. In some families, all members were wounded. The people are busy with themselves, I don’t know if they can do something". In only a few of the villages was there any mention of people being sent to other areas to see what the situation was there. This fact is very much in keeping with what is often observed in the first phase following a sudden-onset disaster. Aid agencies based in Mazar, arrived relatively rapidly, mainly with medical assistance (MSF and ICRC), and blankets/non-food items. Government, UN and Kabul-based NGOs were transported rapidly to the scene and a large number of assessment missions visited the area. Dozens of meetings took place with the local authorities, though limited assistance actually arrived. Reconstruction efforts started without necessarily the involvement of participatory initiatives.

Consultation of affected populations (whether for needs assessment, targeting, or monitoring) was considered essential by most stakeholders, to ensure programmes were adapted to people's needs and implemented effectively. From the point-of-view of the local community, it is also a sign of respect. For agencies, examples showed that it is key to establish a good working relationship. In unstable areas, a relationship of trust with the local population was highlighted as a key security issue, yet, it did not appear that consultation had been more than a formal exercise during the first phases of the Nahrin response. Agencies arrived with their pre-set kits and packages. This resulted in a high level of efficiency, since the first convoy arrived just hours after the first earthquake.

This became more complex during the transition between relief operations and the first days/weeks of the reconstruction efforts, the two being intricately linked and overlapping. Transfer of earthquake mitigation building techniques was the main aim of agencies implementing shelter reconstruction programmes in Nahrin, yet it is not clear that it was perceived as such by the population, or that this preoccupation was even among their priorities. This had tremendous repercussions in the following phases of the operations. The absence of consultation at this stage is even more obvious when one observes the multiplication of health-related projects that seem to be in the pipeline, most of them the result of an HQ decision, with no dialogue with the affected population and extremely little discussions with local authorities. But Nahrin became for a few months "an area in which to fly agency flags"…

The constraints/limits of consultation mentioned by both agency informants and beneficiaries are:

• it takes time and slows down decision-making : it was thereby mentioned as inappropriate for emergency situations, such as in the initial response to the Nahrin earthquake;
• it increases the pressure on agency staff because: consultation leads to the voicing of many requests or complaints and raises the affected population’s expectations; it is rare for community members to all agree on their needs, making it impossible for agencies to satisfy everybody; when the views of beneficiaries are not fully taken into consideration (because of agency capacity, mandate, donor requirements, etc.), it can lead to considerable frustration and tension, thereby increasing the risk of security incidents.

Several informants emphasised the need to have experienced and mature staff to be able to cope with the pressures inherent to consultative and participatory processes.

Targeting usually involves two stages: the definition of targeting criteria and the selection of individuals or households that correspond to these criteria. Though there can be some consultation of local populations to define the targeting criteria, they tend to be defined by the agency (e.g. "vulnerable households", "female and disabled-headed households"). In Nahrin, when participatory processes were used to select beneficiaries, several difficulties were encountered:

• when the selection is delegated to local partners (local NGO, local representatives, etc.) there is a risk of bias, nepotism or corruption (or what is perceived as such by the agency); and
• when the selection of beneficiaries is done within the community, this can be a source of tension and even conflict within the community.

Social control seems to be the most successful mechanism to ensure that targeting procedures are proper (fair, efficient, etc.) although the role of certain elites appeared in Nahrin to be a constraint. In the shura not everybody feels able to speak or voice concerns. Problems encountered in Nahrin in the distribution of relief items and the allocation of means for house reconstruction indicate that transparency, explanation and respect for set procedures are key elements for smooth and participatory targeting processes.

The reasons for asking for a physical contribution from beneficiaries are in most cases pragmatic (reducing costs, saving time), but they can be used as a means to mobilise individuals and prevent the development of 'aid dependency', or even as a kind of capacity-building.

Such participation can put considerable stress on affected populations and even lead to tension and resentment towards the aid agency. The constraints and limits to this kind of participation are:

• the use of labour for a programme may compete with labour needs for livelihood purposes. Some families of beneficiaries may not have the required manpower (e.g. female and disabled-headed households having difficulty building their homes in Nahrin); and,
• the beneficiaries may not have the materials needed or resources to provide them.

Having true participatory mechanisms in the evaluation phase seemed to be a sensitive issue in Nahrin, but also in Afghanistan in general. On the one hand, recrimination and complaints go against the tradition of respect and hospitality towards foreign hosts. Thus people are very careful to always end discussions on cordial and warm footings. On the other hand, it was possible to observe tense shuras with many complaints being raised. Interesting enough, these complaints could have been avoided quite easily, provided that consultative and participatory mechanism had been put in place much earlier in the project cycle.

From the initial findings highlighted above, several factors were identified as affecting the degree of consultation and participation in humanitarian programmes. They involve three levels: context, population and aid agency.

Several questions/issues related to participation and consultation extracted from Afghanistan in general and the Nahrin case study in particular will need to be further developed:

• The importance of information-sharing, transparency and downwards accountability. Even when there is little or no participation, it seems essential to maximise the sharing of information on agency plans, reasons for action (or not), factors affecting the delivery of aid, the way the aid system functions, etc. Besides the question of respect towards affected populations, this is key to ensuring good relations with a community and the security of field teams.
• The relevance of pre-set assistance packages and standards if what should really be considered are people’s views, needs and capacities.
• Consultation takes time and energy: how does one reconcile imperatives of responding to an emergency quickly and take the time to engage in consultation/participation with a community?
• The importance of building a relationship of trust over time (e.g. Acted in Nahrin: "Acted was here before, during and after the earthquake").
• The difficulty of accessing certain groups (women in the case of Afghanistan), and the types of participatory mechanisms that can be put in place in a culturally-sensitive way to gain access to these groups.
• The need for adequate human resources (expatriate and local) having the skills and capacity to cope with the demands of consultation and participation (e.g. psychological stress).
• The need to determine what is an appropriate level of participation in a given context.
• The need for agencies to engage in consultative and participatory processes a way that promotes local initiatives, rather than undermining them.
• Where traditional consultative and participatory systems exist, are they truly representative of the community ("the shura is two guys speaking, the others being too shy to talk. There is a vocal minority with a lot of power", says one aid worker in Nahrin), and are they a good basis to build on for participatory processes? Do forms of consultation and participation introduced by aid agencies come into conflict with traditional systems/decision-making structures?
• Many NGO’s are actively participating in government capacity-building, at the national and regional level. Are these capacity-building efforts: part of participation and consultation processes, complementary to consultation and participation done at the community level, or can they conflict with participation/consultation efforts at the community level? This question becomes even more relevant when one remarks the extremely low level of investment in capacity-building at administrative levels closest to communities and villages (i.e. district and sub-district), in areas such as Nahrin.