Villagers chose which problems to address first, created solutions, crafted agreements and implemented them.

Our team was invited by the US Institute for Peace to work in ten villages across four provinces in Afghanistan, to help communities traumatized by the violence of forty years of war, with foreign families living at the edges of the community who fled or were forced to leave other parts of the country, and a broken economy heavily dependent on foreign aid.

Our partners were a US non-profit who specialties include measuring community trust and identity in postconflict settings (TRENDS Global) and an Afghan-US development firm (Global Impact Management Consulting).

We wanted the villagers to take on their own sovereignty, to govern themselves. They knew how to govern themselves before 1980, but that was a different world, less globalized and more self-contained; they were relatively isolated. Now they are connected to other Afghans from foreign tribes due to internal displacements, and everywhere forced to interact with outside armies, NGOs and businesses, sometimes disrupted by them, sometimes helped. They were also different people, no longer separated by tribe and place, with a clear identity rooted in family, tribe and place.

We began by listening. We began with interviews with whoever would talk to us. We asked who the most influential groups were in the life of the community—families, businesses, agencies and civil society organizations, local, national and international. We then approached those groups and asked them the same question. We also asked them to tell us more about each of the groups they named: Why were they influential? Did they try to help the village as a whole or a particular project? Were they only concerned about themselves and their families? Were they destructive of the village? We asked about the current situation in the community. What were the challenges they faced? We gathered and organized this information and put in on a password protection web portal.

“I am ashamed. I should have done this myself.” - an elder in an Afghan village

Then we invited leaders of the groups who were considered, by their peers, who were trying to help improve life in the village. We asked them to create a vision of what their village would be in ten years, ideally. We made it clear we believed in them but were not going to solve any of their problems. Then we asked them to pick one pressing problem. They picked the lack of electricity in a high school. Here’s the story: The village had two parts, an upper and a lower. In between there was the school that lacked electricity. Leaders of the two parts of the village argued over who should be responsible for providing electricity to the school. Neither side budged. In the meantime, the students could not read after the sun set or run any computers. This situation had gone on for many years. Over two or three meetings, the dozen leaders sat together, found a solution together, crafted an agreement, and implemented it. At one meeting, an elder said, “I should have done this myself.” The school now had electricity.

“We used to do this every year, together, as a community.”- participant in another Afghan village

In another village, the leaders of the groups who considered, by their peers, to help improve life in the village, made their ideal vision of the village in ten years. . We made it clear we believed in them but were not going to solve any of their problems. Then we asked them to pick one pressing problem. They chose their irrigation canals, which were clogged with refuse and junk. Here’s the story: For generations, every year, members of the village would come together each spring and clear out the canals. Sometime after the US invasion, a US contractor received funds to clear the canals, so the villagers let the contractors do the work (for a pretty penny, paid by US taxpayers). This went on for years. The contract stopped receiving payment and stopped doing the work. Meanwhile the villagers kept waiting for the return of the contractors. The canals filled up and became less usable each year. Over two or three meetings, the dozen or so leaders sat together, recreated how they had done this together before the US contractors took the work on ten or fifteen years earlier, crafted an agreement, and implemented it. At one meeting, a participant said, “We used to do this every year, together, as a community.”

The project was just getting going after eight months, when our funding was stopped by the US after the overthrow and change of the government in Afghanistan. If continued, all indications were that the choosing and solving of problems by local actors would have grown and sped up in all ten communities.

Village and district support for the Solution Accelerator:

• Local participants in seven of the communities asked us to continue work with them.

• A district governor asked us to expand the Solution Accelerator to his district.

• Taliban leaders approved the project to continue in one of the four provinces.