ASIL Programs > Career Development > Arthur C. Helton Fellowship > Helton Fellowship Profiles and Reflections > 2010 ASIL Helton Fellows > ASIL Helton Fellowship Reflections

Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission,
Brock Dahl — Kabul, Afghanistan

Post-conflict environments give rise to a host of humanitarian issues that can be difficult to prioritize. The Afghanistan experience, however, offers instructive lessons on the importance of taking a pro-active and focused approach to human rights concerns. The human rights community does valuable work reacting to perceived violations. Yet, while the oversight role played by many rights organizations is critical, there is an urgent need to develop a more effective model of early engagement that will preempt the rise of bad actors, and pursue additional options for dealing with them once they have become entrenched. Such a model must be sensitive to the development of criminalized economies in post-conflict states which current methods of assistance often perpetuate.

As I have written elsewhere, it is essential for intervening forces to structure their engagement to limit opportunities for corruption from the outset. The aid community that accompanies such interventions must also refine the way it provides assistance. In short, the corruption of assistance provided by intervening forces and development organizations provides money to local illicit actors (many of whom are tied to or occupy positions in the host government). Such actors then use the money to further their own unsavory agendas and maintain a veil of impunity in the host country.

In post-conflict situations, those local actors who are powerful enough to establish and lead militias are often best positioned to occupy positions of authority and to control resources when the conflict settles. Into this political economy of conflict enter foreign military forces and aid organizations seeking ways to quickly deliver resources and services to the local population. In Afghanistan, these assistance efforts have involved widespread development, logistics, and private security contracting that have frequently accrued to the benefit of well-positioned, and highly immoral, actors.

For example, these actors bid on development (largely construction) contracts, and then pass the award through a series of sub-contractors, each of which takes a cut of the contract. Through such cascade contracting, the ultimate amount actually spent on the project is only a sliver of the original award. Others bid on logistics and security contracts to move goods and protect convoys and bases. Regardless of the means, these actors are then able to use the funds to bribe government officials (where they are not government officials themselves), such as key ministry agents, judges, and police, to protect their syndicates and their own well-being. In the process they can commit a bevy of human rights violations, ranging from actions to protect their commercial empires (such as utilizing state forces to illegally detain, torture, or kill competitors) to outright sociopathic behavior (such as sexually exploiting children).

In the age of sanctified sovereignty, it is nearly impossible for occupying forces and the aid community to go after well-entrenched local warlords who often operate under the guise of officialdom. To avoid these situations, initial interventions should be structured so that such power players cannot build a base, and foreign assistance providers must be far more careful about who they choose as local partners. Assistance should also be channeled to local, trusted organizations who have additional options for deconstructing the power-base of illicit actors.

The work supported by the Arthur C. Helton Fellowship program helped shed light on this dangerous nexus between corruption and human rights violations. The Fellowship has enabled me to make a number of specific recommendations to pertinent parties and to explore potential follow-up opportunities to continue to work for greater protection of human rights in post-conflict zones. I am grateful to the Fellowship benefactors and the American Society of International Law for making this work possible.