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The Political Economy of Customary VillageOrganizations in Rural Afghanistan

Jennifer BrickDepartment of Political ScienceUniversity of Wisconsin – Madison, USA

[email protected] is at best a fragile state and at worst a failed state.Nevertheless, public goods are providedroutinely and effectively in villages throughout the country. Whatexplains the provision of public goodsin such a context? I argue that customary organizations are the primarysource of order in Afghanistannot only because they can extract and redistribute resources fromvillagers, but because they areconstrained in their ability to do so. Constraints such as the separationof village powers and local checksand balances facilitate local predictability despite national-level chaos.By analyzing the productive role

of informal organizations in the provision of public goods, this researchbrings local politics into thestudy of state building in post-conflict or fragile environments. State-building strategies that build onproductive informal organizations may improve their long-run prospects forsuccess. The first step inthe investigation of the potential for a bottom-up state-building strategyis determining what workslocally.

1 Prepared for the Annual Meeting of the Central Eurasian Studies Society,Washington, DC, September 2008.Funding for this project was provided by the Japanese International

Cooperation Agency (JICA), the AfghanistanResearch and Evaluation (AREU), the Bradley Foundation, and the Universityof Wisconsin – Madison. The authorwishes to thank Ghulam Sakhi Frozish, Nasreen Quraishi, Abdul Hadi Sadat,Gulalai Karimi, Fauzia Rahimi, HussanWafaey, and Ibrahim Mahmoodi at AREU for their dedication in collectingdata for this project. The author isparticularly grateful and indebted to Deborah Smith at AREU as well as toPaul Lundberg, David Garner, Adam Pain,and David Stanfield for sharing their wisdom during fieldwork inAfghanistan. Melanie Manion, Edward Friedman,Ilia Murtazashvili, and Meina Cai provided useful comments and suggestionson many of the ideas presented in

this paper

Positive effects of local organizations are obfuscated in publicdiscourse on Afghanistan whichfocuses on the weakness of the state (Fukuyama 2006; Ghani and Lockhart2008; Warnock 2008).Despite government weakness, citizens have faith in local organizations.According to a recent survey,



seventy-eight percent believe their community leaders are fair and honest.Seventy-six percent of those



interviewed said that their informal customary local councils (shuras orjirgas) are effective at deliveringjustice and representing their interests (Asia Foundation 2007). Detailedqualitative studies ofAfghanistan show that disputes are normally resolved at the local level

(Noelle-Karimi 2006; Roy 2003;Shahrani 1998). Not only are disputes settled locally, water, landresources, and access to credit aregenerally maintained through community rules and norms (Emadi 1996, 2005;Favre 2005, 2006; Klijnand Pain 2007; Wardak 2004; Wily 2003). Public faith in “traditional”organizations stems from theirability to deliver public goods.In this paper, I focus on a constellation of three key customaryorganizations in rural Afghanistan:shuras (village councils), maliks (village executives), and mullahs(village lawgivers). These organizationsemerged before a central state consolidated, and their existence is thus

exogenous to the state. Theyexisted parallel to existing regimes and endured decades of war and chaos.Explaining the emergence ofthese organizations, however, is beyond the scope of this paper. Based onempirical evidence, I find apotentially productive role such organizations can play in the state-building process.The results show that customary organizations are alive and well in ruralAfghanistan. They indeedendured decades of fighting and displacement. They not only endured, butthey provide a wide range ofpublic goods in rural areas, including those that affect local safety andsecurity.

The field of post-conflict state building is dominated by two approachesthat share a distrust ofsubnational political actors. Neither approach analyzes politicalorganizations exogenous to statebreakdown or reconstruction. The most common approach emphasizes theorganization of violence andarmed groups or warlords. Their deleterious effects are well documented(Bates 2001; Clapham 2002;Reno 2002; Zartman 1995). The second approach analyzes developmentpolicies and internationally-provided solutions to development dilemmas in these contexts. Bothdevelopment economics andinternational relations privilege external interventions such as “peace

building” or “state building”policies and their effectiveness (Fukuyama 2004, 2006; Milliken 2003;Barnett, Fang, and Zuercher 2008;Rotberg 2004). Positive analysis of customary organizations contributes toour knowledge of statebuilding by describing the informal foundations of order in a failedstate.This approach to customary organizations brings the concept of self-governance into the state-



building process by recognizing that they are more than mereanthropological curiosities or obstacles topolitical development. Empirical studies in self-organization have longrecognized the ability ofindividuals to overcome collective dilemmas to provide public goods in theabsence of external, third-

party enforcement (Boettke and Coyne 2005; Gibson, McKean, and Ostrom2000; Olson 1971; Ostrom1990, 2005; Platteau 1991; Tsai 2006; Varughese and Ostrom 2001; Wade1988). In the absence ofeffective central authority, the self-governance approach expects localactors to provide public goods. Infact, local self-organization under conditions of central state anarchymay produce more beneficialdevelopment outcomes than formal governance by predatory or corruptcentral authorities (Leeson2007). The self-governance approach stresses decentralized coordination inthe absence of well definedgovernance structures. I build on the insights of the self-governance

approach by analyzing hierarchicalcustomary organizations in public goods provision.

In the sections that follow, I analyze the political economy of customaryorganizations and publicgoods provision in rural Afghanistan and develop a theory that describesthe conditions under whichpublic goods are provided by local organizations in post-conflictsocieties. Local organizations willprovide public goods when they are able to raise local sources of revenue.However, revenue collectionon its own does not guarantee that public goods will be provided as localleaders may simply engage in



predatory behavior. Local leaders must be able to extract resources, butthey must be constrained intheir ability to do so. The theory describes the four conditions thatfacilitate effective local governance:independent sources local of revenue, separation of local authority,

checks and balances between theseauthorities, and the presence of economic veto players. Independentrevenue sources generated locallyenable the provision of public goods while constraints on extractionthrough separation of customaryauthority enable local accountability. Economic veto players and checksand balances further provideincentives for customary organizations to provide public goods by limitingpredation. I argue thatcustomary organizations are the only local organizations that exhibitthese characteristics, and aretherefore able to provide public goods.This leads to two testable hypotheses. First, communities that have

customary organizations willhave higher levels of public goods provision than those that do not.Secondly, the presence of otherforms of local organizations, especially donor-supported communitydevelopment councils, will notexhibit higher levels of public goods provision than communities that donot have such organizations.To explore these questions in rural Afghanistan I rely on bothquantitative and qualitative evidence.First, I analyze two nationally-representative surveys, the 2005 NationalRural Vulnerability Assessment(NRVA) (Ministry of Rural Rehabilitation and Development and CentralStatistics Office 2007) and the

2007 Asia Foundation Survey of the Afghan People (Asia Foundation 2007),to determine therelationship between customary organizations, non-customary organizations,and a variety oftheoretically-relevant factors that may explain public goods provision.The statistical analysis exploresthe effect of customary and non-customary organizations on three types ofpublic goods: resolution ofland disputes, general dispute resolution, and local safety and security.Second, I present three casestudies illustrating public goods provision based on larger set oforiginal semi-structured interviews andfocus group discussions I collected during fieldwork in 32 villages across

six provinces in ruralAfghanistan. These case studies help illuminate processes suggested by thestatistical analysis. Theanalysis provides evidence that the presence of customary organizations invillages improves theprovision of public goods.The findings imply that there is the potential for productive cooperationbetween state-building



programs and customary organizations and demonstrates these organizationsperform many functionsthat are usually performed the state. In that sense, they effectivelycomplement the nascent state.Difficulties arise when state-building efforts proceed as if theseorganizations are inherent enemies of

modernization or do not exist at all.

1.1 Political and Economic Resource Allocation in Rural Afghanistan

Customary organizations are a primary source of order in Afghanistan. Theyare as diverse in name asthe landscape in which are found. These organizations are pervasive,especially in rural areas wheremore than 80 percent of the population resides. However, they areoverlooked in attempts to explainand cure “state failure” in Afghanistan. State builders often treat themas embodiments of a“conservative political culture” that disenfranchises women or exploits

peasants. In most cases, statebuilders do not consider them at all or they are just assumed to have beenwiped out by decades of war.Emphasis on their “traditional” features conceals their “modern”capacities to govern. This researchdoes not make a normative argument about the role such organizationsshould play in political life.Instead, it explores the role of these organizations in the provision ofpublic goods. Neglecting the roleof these organizations in the diagnostic phase of state building increasesthe risk of policy failure.



First, I provide some terminology. Organizations are “groups ofindividuals bound by some commonpurpose” (North 1990, 5). The state is a formal or “parchment”organization (Carey 2000). Informalorganizations include any non-governmental collective decision-making

procedure (Ostrom 1990). Inevery society there are a myriad of informal organizations. They rangefrom social networks, bowlingclubs, or groups of armed guerillas. In the context of Afghanistan,informal organizations includecustomary or traditional organizations, informal credit systems, as wellas warlords. Informalorganizations can provide public goods (Ellickson 1991).In the absence of effective states or markets, political and economicresources are often allocatedby a third type of organization: community organizations. Communityorganizations that have “stablemembership and well-developed mechanisms for transmitting private

information and enforcing socialnorms among its members [have] the potential to provide sometimes moreefficient coordination thaneither the state or the market” (Bardhan 2006, 18). Customary villageorganizations are not “civilsociety” organizations for the simple reason that they do more thanadvocate. They can sanction,punish, reward, and restrict behavior. Furthermore, membership in thesegroups is generally fixed.Customary and non-customary organizations are central in the Afghanpolitical economy. Forexample, warlords and their associated political parties were not acentral part of the political landscape

in Afghanistan until the state began its downward spiral after theCommunist coup in 1978 and theSoviet invasion which followed the next year. Such groups emerged tocontrol the state apparatus aswell as gain spoils from its decline (Schetter, Glassner, and Karokhail2007). Most contemporary Afghanpolitical parties emerged in the late 1970s and 1980s as armed factions.For this reason, the Single Non-Transferable Voting system (SNTV) is used to elect members of parliament,as it creates obstacles to theformation of party (“warlord”) blocs. A dizzying array of scholars havewritten on warlords and armedgroups in Afghanistan since 1979 (Aras and Toktas 2008; Donini, Niland,

and Wermester 2004;Englebert and Tull 2008; Fukuyama 2006; Giustozzi 2000; Goodson 2001;Jones 2008; Maley 1998, 2002;Rashid 2002; Rubin 2002; Saikal and Maley 1991; Giustozzi and Ullah 2006;Schetter, Glassner, andKarokhail 2007). New Community Development Councils (CDCs) that emerged in2003 as the result ofefforts by the Ministry of Rural Rehabilitation and Development (MRRD) arealso a type of non-



customary organization that emerged during the state reconstructionprocess.

1.1.1 Customary Organizations in Rural Afghanistan

Customary organizations receive far less attention despite their prowess

in maintaining local order.To remedy this deficit, I describe the three most pervasive customaryorganizations in rural Afghanistan:shuras, maliks, and mullahs. A shura is a deliberative body. A malik is anexecutive authority. A mullahis a judicial and religious arbiter. Maliks and mullahs are individualsbut represent organizations thathave specific functions. The organizations have various names in differentparts of the country; I groupthem according to the rules that govern their behavior. Theseorganizations are summarized in Table 1.



Organization

Role

Shura

Village Council (Parliament)

Other Names

Qaumi Shura

Tribal Council

Jirga

Pashtun name for local council

Shura-ye Rish-i-Safidan

Elders Council (Dari)

Spinzheri (Spingeri)

Elders (Pashto)

Meshrano Jirga

Council of Elders (Pashto)

Oq Soqol

Elders (Uzbek)

Mu-ye Safidan

Elders Council(white hairs, Dari)

Majlis/Jalasa

Meeting (Dari, used in Hazaraareas)

Maraka

Meeting

Mullah

Religious Leader (Judicial)



Other Names

Imam

Formally trained religious leader

Mawlawi

Religious teacher

Ulama

Group of religious scholars

Pir

Sufi religious leaders

Sayyed/Sadat/Eshan

Notable families who are directdescendents of the ProphetMuhammad

Qazi

Islamic Judge (also a governmentjudge)

Haji (Bibi Haji)

Pilgrim (Bibi Haji is a female

equivalent)

Karbalayi

Shi’a who made pilgrimage toKarbala in Iraq.

Malik

Village Representative (Executive)

Other Names

Arbob

Executive, can also signifylandowner

Qaryadar

Executive



Khan

Executive, tribal leader, can alsosignify landowner

Qalantar

Leader

Wakil

Representative

Nomayenda

Representative

Table 1: Customary Organizations in Rural Afghanistan2

2 The names of organizations which I list here are those I encounteredduring fieldwork in rural Afghanistan. Thislist is by no means exhaustive.

These organizations are a relative constant amid political chaos inAfghanistan. They do not havethe uniformity of standards associated with formal bodies (Giustozzi andUllah 2006; Noelle-Karimi2006). They evolve over time: “’traditional’ and ‘customary’ [titles]applied to local bodies of decision

making are relative terms … *they+ by no means imply timelessness orimmutability” (Noelle-Karimi2006, 8). However, they have structural features that can be identifiedacross time and place, despiteregional, cultural, and religious diversity. For example, according tofocus group discussions conductedas part of a national livelihood survey, almost all participants said theywould first approach a relative ifthey had a dispute. However, when asked who they would approach second webegin to see theprimacy of these organizations: 35 percent said they would go to theirvillage shura, 25 percent saidthey would go to their village malik, while 22 percent said they would

consult their mullah (see Figure 1).Outside of family, more than 82 percent of focus group participants saidthey would use one of theseorganizations.



0

0.05

0.1

0.15

0.2

0.25

0.3

0.35

0.4

Goto Shura

Go To Malik

Go To Mullah

Organization Approached to Resolve Dispute

These organizations are also resilient. In the 1970s, the government ofDaud Khan tried to co-optmany of them into the formal government. In the 1980s, the Communistgovernment tried to eliminatethem as agents of feudalism and backwardness (Hyman 1984). Various

warlords, governments, andpolitical parties in the 1990s understood the importance of theseorganizations and sought to dominatethem by populating them with their own agents. However, theseinterventions were usually superficialand did not have a significant impact on their operations.

Figure 1: Source NRVA (2005), Male Focus Group InterviewAt first glance these organizations may resemble feudal systemscharacterized by inequality indecision making and exploitation of peasants by landlords (Ertman 1997;

Moore 1966; Scott 1976;Skocpol 1979). However, anthropologists, economists, as well as historianshave noted that peasant orrural life in Afghanistan is historically more egalitarian than in otherareas of South and Central Asia:To superficial observers rural society may have appeared feudal, withkhans(lineage leaders) and maliks (village leaders) exercising absolute power,either as



landed aristocrats or creditors, over landless or debt-ridden peasants.The realityin most areas was far more complex. Authority within micro-societiestraditionallywas exercised by a jirga or shura (assembly), with the influence of thekhan or

malik within the assembly determined by a complex range of factors,includingthe individual’s social position, mediating skills, and institutionalresources at hisdisposal. In addition, land holdings in Afghanistan were for the most partsmall,with some ostensibly large estates being communal lands registered in asinglename; frequently there was little expectation on the part of a debtor thathewould have to repay (Saikal and Maley 1991, 15).Afghan communities are not feudal. The pervasiveness and diversity ofcustomary structures

illustrates the degree to which power is distributed across individuals incommunities. In addition to thethree main organizations, there are other important village organizationssuch as mirabs (village waterresource managers) and hawala (money lenders) that play an important rolein village governance(Kakar 2005; Rahmani 2006; Favre 2005). However, the malik, shura, andmullah provide thefoundations of political order and are the informal basis of politicsthroughout most Afghan villages. Inthe following sections, I provide analytical descriptions of shuras,mullahs, and maliks.



Shura (Village Council)

Informal customary village councils in rural Afghanistan are referred toas shuras or jirgas.3 I define ashura as the smallest deliberative body in a community.4 Village decision

making is characterized bycooperation and consensus, which is illustrated by the significance oftribal jirgas and local shuras(Newell 1972, 25). These councils are not formal. Shuras are not fixed-membership organizations and inmost cases they do not meet with predictably, but they do meet often. Theygather to discuss particularissues or resolve disputes that arise within the village or withneighboring areas. In most instances,members of shuras are elders who have achieved positions of respect in thecommunity:[Shura membership is a] traditional position that is normally given to oldmen

who are widely respected and trusted for their honesty and goodwill.Almostevery village has at least a few of these men who are considered to be thelegislative body of the village…Power brokers refer any legislative issuethatconcern broader village interests to these elders. It is important to notethat theyare not considered to be executive people as they naturally tend to bekind and forgiving personalities (Rahmani 2006, 14-15).

0%

10%

20%

30%

40%

50%

60%

70%

80%

90%

100%

Shura for Water Disute

Shura for Land Dispute



Shura for Aid Issue

Shura for SecurityIssue

Use of Shuras for Disputes

Average

If Community Has a Shura

3 The term shura is an Arabic word which literally means “council”. Theterm shura is used by non-Pashtun villagesto indicate the village council. Jirga is a Pashto term that also means“council”, although it translates literally as“circle”, which reflects the seating arrangements participants take in thecountryside. There are several varieties ofshuras or jirgas at the village level. Because the shura exists to deal

with issues as they arise they are flexible inmembership as well as in scope. The shura that is indicated here is at thesmallest level.4 For purposes of simplicity, I will refer to all customary villagecouncils as shuras. The term jirga is common, yet isa name that applies only to the Pashtun-speaking subpopulations.

Shuras deal with a wide range of issues, but they have no fixed agenda.Results from the NRVA malefocus group discussions reveal that individuals rely upon customaryorganizations for many of theircommunity issues. For example, when a community has a shura 90 percentclaimed to use them to

resolve land-related disputes. Over 60 percent claimed to use their shurato resolve security and waterresource management issues (see Figure 2).

Figure 2: Source NRVA (2005), Male Focus Group Interviews



0%

20%

40%

60%

80%

100%

Pashtun

Tajik

Uzbek

Hazara

Turkmen

Baloch

Accessibility to Shuras by Ethnicity

Strongly Disagree

Disagree

Somewhat Agree

Strongly Agree

Theoretically, every male can aspire to leadership in the community, asthe jirga or shura is based on theconcept of communal authority (Gregorian 1969, 40-41).Although various ethnic groups may have specific types of shuras, theyhave many commoncharacteristics. For example, shuras are usually accessible to all male(and sometimes female) membersof the community.The structure and authority of the council varies with local traditionsand

experience. Its most basic feature is the acceptance of the principle thatall familyinterests within the group concerned may be represented in deliberationsofjustice, war, labor, and land. The spirit and procedure are usuallydemocratic.Theoretically, a consensus of the whole group in question is necessary, ifit is to



act. The jirga [shura] therefore encourages a considerable degree ofindividualinitiative, although in many instances it may be dominated by powerfulchiefs. Itis also a convenient device for accommodation among competinginterests….There is no traditional limit to the size of the group to which

the jirga[shura] principle may be applied…a jirga [shura] might consist of tribalchiefs(khans) or clan leaders (maliks) representing their communities (Newell1972, 26).

Figure 3 illustrates that shuras are accessible to individuals acrossethnic groups in Afghanistan. Theshura is generally the most important decision-making body in thecommunity because it usually derivesits authority directly from the will of the people. It is the center ofvillage governance.

Figure 3: Source Asia Foundation (2007)



Mullah (Religious Leader/Lawgiver)

Mullahs are typically self-trained religious leaders. I define a mullah asa community religious leader,representing the lowest level of religious organization in Afghanistan.

Mullahs are part of a broadnetwork of religious leaders that includes formally trained priests(imams), judges (qazi), scholars(malwawi), and those who have gone on religious pilgrimages(Haji/Karbalayi). Villages may haveseveral mullahs, depending on their size and cultural diversity. Shi’a andSunni populations coexisting inone community maintain separate mosques and separate religious leaders.Mullahs not only performreligious rites and services, but they are sought out to help resolvedisputes, especially regarding familyor other personal issues. In Afghanistan, an imam is a title given tosomeone who has had official

training to lead prayers. A mullah is someone who carries out thisfunction “regularly andprofessionally,” despite a lack of formal training (Dorronsoro 2005, 48).Due to the decentralized natureof religious leadership in Islam, mullahs can operate autonomously fromreligious administration andhierarchy. Throughout history, Afghan leaders have sought to co-optreligious leaders and bring themunder government control (Olesen 1995) . However, such efforts had limitedsuccess due to extremelyweak capacity of the state to actually execute its wishes and the shiftsin government policies acrossadministrations.

The mosque is the center of religious life in rural areas, but it alsoserves as a deliberative center for(usually male) villagers. For instance, many interviews and focus groupsfor this research project wereconducted in mosques as they are open to community members and outsiders.Villagers describe anddemarcate the size of their community by the number of mosques (e.g. “ourvillage is big, we have sixmosques”).The mullah is the spiritual leader of the village and traditionally playsthe role ofthe judge, the teacher, and in the absence of a doctor, the role of thevillage

doctor. The mullah’s power is derived from his religious and judiciaryrole thathe exercises on a daily basis. It is not easy for anyone, including otherpowerfulpeople such as Zamindar [landowners] and Qaryadar [executives], toconfrontthe Mullah in public (Rahmani 2006, 13).Religious leaders have a range of responsibilities. They mediate disputes,not only within the



community but between communities as well. Mullahs and other religiousleaders raise revenue fromvillagers. They are also responsible to collect alms to help the lessfortunate and raise funds to maintainmosques:Leadership, administration, and financing are locally based…Individual

mullahssubsist upon fees for ceremonial and advisory services on behalf of theirclientsand often receive endowments of land or agricultural income from thevillages ortribes who engage them. Many mullahs cultivate or at least oversee theirownland. The support of corporate institutions, such as schools, mosques, andmonasteries has traditionally come from endowments based upon land – theconcept of waqf. Customarily, the mullahs have managed this income ontheirown behalf (Newell 1972, 26-27).While most scholars agree that the shura is the center of political life,

some argue that religious leadersconstitute the heart of village governance in Afghanistan because they canaccess community funds:



Amongst the power brokers of the village, mullahs and mosques are theonly entities who enjoy support of public funding regularly. All expensesofmosques and mullahs are paid by village contributions. When villagers wereasked, “What motivates you to give your money to pay for the mosque but

notfor the school or road,” they responded, “We can live without educationandwithout a road, but we cannot live without our mosque (Rahmani 2006, 20).”During the period of Taliban rule in Afghanistan, authorities sought todemote the role of jirgas andshuras and place the mullah at the center of community life. Talibanleadership developed their ownnetwork of religious leaders and sought to impose a particularinterpretation of Sunni Islam on thecountryside. In principle, the Taliban also tried to eliminate use of thePashtun customary law,Pashtunwali, which contradicts some Islamic jurisprudence (Nojumi,

Mazurana, and Stites 2004, 45-47).

Malik (Village Executive)

While there is general uniformity in the role of shuras and mullahs inrural Afghanistan, the role ofmaliks, village executives, is more complex. I define a malik as theindividual who represents communityinterests to formal government institutions. He is the village executive.5In Kabul Province and in manyPashtun areas, village executives are referred to as maliks, which canalso signify a Pashtun clan leader(but a malik is not necessarily a clan leader). In other parts of the

country the individual who fulfillsthese functions are called arbob, qaryadar, khan, kalantar, nomayenda orother titles. In Pakistan andother parts of South Asia, the term malik may connote a large and powerfullandowner. The malik inrural Afghanistan is not always a large landowner. As was the case withmullahs and shuras, previousgovernments tried to co-opt the maliks to serve their own purposes. UnderKing Zahir Shah (1930-1973)and his cousin Sardar Daud Khan (1973-78), government administrationstried to use the maliks orappoint their own maliks to extract land tax in rural areas. The CommunistPeople’s Democratic Party of

Afghanistan (PDPA) government tried to appoint its own “parallel” maliksto villages as representativesof the Party during the 1980s (Giustozzi 2000). These efforts wereunsuccessful. Due to past efforts toformalize the position the title has a different meaning than it doeselsewhere in Central and South Asia.

5 Most are male but during field work I found evidence of female maliks.The head of provincial administration in



Balkh Province in Northern Afghanistan told of at least six female maliksthat he was aware of in the province. Iinterviewed a female malik in Nahri Shahi District in Balkh Province.6 The lowest level of Government at the time of research was at thedistrict level (woluswali). The head of thedistrict government is the woluswal (district administrator or governor).

Although the 2003 Constitution stipulatesthat the lowest level of government should be village councils, thisaspect of the Constitution is not yetimplemented. The Ministry of Rural Rehabilitation and Developmentadvocates the use of its CommunityDevelopment Councils for this purpose, while other ministries andpresidential offices have strongly disagreed withthis position.

In contemporary Afghanistan, villagers refer to the malik as the “bridgebetween the people and thegovernment.” In most instances, the malik is selected by the village shuraand then presented to the

district governor (woluswal), who represents the lowest level ofgovernment in Afghanistan.6 The malikis responsible for representing community interests to the government andthen communicatinggovernment issues and news back to the community. Woluswals have regularmeetings with maliks todiscuss issues of security, development, and governance in theirrespective districts. In many areas, themaliks obtain their position through heredity or through position in theclan structure. Because themalik deals with government documents and other formal issues, it isimportant to villagers that he is



literate, so this means maliks come from well-educated families in thecommunity. Maliks are notdirectly paid for their work. If they are not independently wealthy, theymay depend on communitycontributions from villagers in the form of wheat or other crops as

compensation for their work.Members of the village shura elect one person and introduce him to thedistrict authority. The district head [woluswal] then signs legaldocumentsappointing the person as malik and sends those documents to the primarydistrictcourt. After a series of additional legal processes, the court issues anentitlement seal that recognizes him as the malik of that particularvillage(Nojumi, Mazurana, and Stites 2004, 44).In many districts, I found that maliks have stamps or seals. In some areaswhere the woluswal had notissued them, maliks use a homemade seal consisting of their thumbprint and

signature in lieu of astamp. While maliks regularly coordinate with and report to governmentofficials, their role is notmentioned in any official law or in the constitution.In many cases, where villagers are dissatisfied with their malik, they canchoose another malik. InHerat province, for example, I found evidence that maliks are electedthrough the use of ballot boxes. Inmost areas they are selected using consensus procedures typical in shuras.I illustrate some of theselection procedures in case studies.

1.1.2 Non-Customary Organizations: Community Development Councils (CDCs)

CDCs are the most significant and pervasive non-customary organizations inAfghanistan. Since 2001,the Government of Afghanistan embarked on a major national program, theNational Solidarity Program(NSP), which created more than 18,000 CDCs.7 The program is managed by theMinistry of RuralRehabilitation and Development (MRRD) and is funded entirely bymultilateral and bilateral donors, withcore support from the World Bank. They are designed to serve a conduit forexternal development fundsto create public goods and services. For this reason, they may play afundamental role in the provision

of public goods in rural Afghanistan. Furthermore, MRRD, severalinternational NGOs, and donors havesuggested that the CDCs replace the customary system.

7 As of July 2008.8 MRRD/NSP website: http://nspafghanistan.org/about_nsp.shtm

The NSP is a Community Driven-Development (CDD) project, an approachpromoted by NGOs and



international assistance agencies that stresses participatory,decentralized delivery of public goods(Gupta, Grandvoinnet, and Romani 2004; Mansuri and Rao 2004). Theprinciple objectives of the CDCsare “to deliver project-based community based development and to improvecommunity governance”

(Ministry of Rural Rehabilitation and Development 2008, 1). The governmentdoes not directlyimplement this program; instead MRRD contracts more than 24 NGOs (mostlyEuropean and American)and international organizations called “Facilitating Partners” (FPs) whoin turn hired “social organizers”to mobilize communities and create the councils. To achieve theseobjectives, FPs have theresponsibility to: (1) hold elections in each community to establish theCDC; (2) build capacities of CDCsto identify subprojects, prepare plans, and implement training thatdevelops skills in participation,consensus-building, accounting, procurement and contract management,

operations and maintenance,and monitoring; (3) provide funds for the projects; and (4) link the CDCsto government agencies, NGOs,and donors to improve access to resources.8



FPs established the first CDCs in 2003, rolling them out initially in 80districts across most provincesof Afghanistan. Usually, MRRD contracts with the FPs to cover entiredistricts. A CDC should comprise ofno fewer than 50 but no more than 300 households. According to

regulations, each CDC receives $200per household in block grant funds that are used to fund projects thecommunity selects (between$10,000 and $60,000 per community). In theory communities should provide a10 percent“contribution” to each project. This can be done through “in-kind”contributions such as labor to buildthe project. However, villagers rarely contribute their own funds directlyto the project.The mostly foreign FPs determine the size of CDCs and demarcate bordersbetween communities,although in some cases this is done with community cooperation andconsultation. The number of CDCs

in a community is not based on the actual number of villages but on thesize of the population in thedistrict. Thus, the boundaries of a CDC have a difficulty correspondingwith self-identified communityboundaries. For example, in one district the implementing FP received acontract from MRRD to create40 CDCs in a district, yet according to local government officials therewere only 15 villages in thedistrict.Each CDC should have elections for members including an executive boardconsisting of a head,deputy, secretary, and treasurer. During field research, I found limitedevidence that elections occurred

in most villages. A possible explanation is that “development shuras” havebeen the primary conduit ofhumanitarian and development aid to communities since the early 1980s(Carter and Connor 1989), thusindividuals understand that they can create a participatory façade andstill receive project funds.CDCs are also intended to increase female participation at the villagelevel as customaryorganizations do not always include women in public deliberations. CDCsshould be equallyrepresentative of men and women and they should meet jointly, althoughthis is very rarely the case. Ifwomen do participate, they do so separately from the men in their

community, communicating throughmale relatives. In some areas, the FPs established separate female CDCsthat have their own executiveboards. Female CDCs may exist in name for accounting purposes, they varyrarely thrive in practice.

The rationale for the NSP was to fill a “gap” in governance at the locallevel. In an MRRD



presentation to donors and stakeholders in September 2007, a Ministryofficial stated that such aprogram is necessary because “village governance structures had notexisted in Afghanistan for morethan 200 years.”9 The CDCs fill this perceived void not only from adevelopmental perspective, but

because they generate “social capital.”10 The Ministry and other NGOs anddonors active in funding andimplementing the NSP and creating CDCs argue that they have had atransformative effect on the livesof villagers. In fact, some of the FPs implementing the NSP claim that theprogram is vital to Afghans notbecause it can provide basic infrastructure, but because it generates“participation” in the countryside.According to one of the organizations implementing the program, “If theCDCs just provideinfrastructure, then all of our work has been a massive failure.” 11According to those involved indesigning the NSP:

9 Presentation, MRRD official, Launch of NSP II, World Bank SupervisoryMission, Ministry of Rural Rehabilitationand Development (MRRD), Kabul, Afghanistan, August 28, 2007.10 Presentation, MRRD official, National Solidarity Program Official,Ministry Rural Rehabilitation and Development(MRRD), Workshop on Investigating the Sustainability of CommunityDevelopment Councils, Kabul Afghanistan.March 6, 2007.11 Statement by Manager of an International Organization implementing NSP,January 21, 2008. Workshop: TowardSustainable Community Development Councils. Ministry of Foreign Affairs,Kabul, Afghanistan. Sponsored by the

Afghanistan Research and Evaluation Unit (AREU).



The intent of the National Solidarity Program was to address the processofdemocratization from the group level up, in parallel to the process ofconstitutionmaking and rule writing at the center…Villages that were once the sites of

neglector predatory behavior by lower-level government functionaries were turnedintothe building blocks of a democratic process…Having gathered the necessaryinstitutional and social capital and demonstrated its usefulness in thecreation ofinfrastructure and services, the program is now ready to become theplatform fora more ambitious series of undertakings at the village level. It could…become amechanism for the registration and formalization of property rights anddisputeresolution at the village level (Ghani and Lockhart 2008, 206-208).

While development interventions are usually designed with good intentionsto addressdevelopment needs, they are also inherently political (Ferguson 1994).MRRD has insisted that CDCsreplace existing governance structures at the community level and berecognized as the official villagecouncils called for in the Constitution. In 2007, the Ministry beganunilaterally educating villagers on anew “bylaw”12 that stated the CDCs are the village councils mandated bythe Constitution, while otherMinistries or the elected Parliament had yet to agree to such a position.Due to the broad claims made by those who designed and implement the CDCs,

I consider theirpotentially important role in providing public goods. However, the taskhere is not to evaluate the CDCs;it is to consider their role in the constellation of actors that canprovide public goods to communities.Theoretically and empirically, I consider how well these organizationsperform considering the broaderorganizational context.

12 A bylaw is akin to an administrative regulation in the U.S. legalsystem. The bylaw provides administrativeguidelines to a particular ministry.

1.2 A Theory of Local Self-Governance

Under what conditions can customary organizations provide public goods? Iargue that fourmechanisms—separation of power among community organizations, checks andbalances betweenorganizations, the ability to raise local revenue under a hard budgetconstraint, and the presence of



economic veto players—facilitate the provision of public goods. These fourconditions provide a revenuebasis and accountability mechanisms that prevent predation and promote thedelivery of publicservices.Theories of local cooperation and self-governance emphasize the emergence

of simple norms thatmanage scarce resources (Ostrom 1990). Theories of repeated games predictthat cooperative behaviorwill emerge when individuals are engaged in face-to-face, repeatedinteractions. Models of communityenforcement demonstrate that people in small communities can cooperatethrough small-scalemechanisms (Ellickson 1991; Kandori 1992). These approaches direct ourattention to the role of localcooperation in the absence of effective state authority. However, byfocusing on face-to-face and othersmall-scale interaction, they do not capture the structural features ofvillages that influence public goods

provision. The theory I elaborate here builds on the self-governanceapproach by acknowledging thepossibility and pervasiveness of self-organized arrangements but adds thepossibility of local self-arranged hierarchy.



The first feature of customary organizations contributing to public goodsprovision is informalseparation of powers. Separation of power implies that organizations ofactors within communitieshave the right to operate within a particular policy-making domain. Formal

constraints on rulers are asource of beneficial economic outcomes. Theories of government size relateveto players to the size ofgovernment (Persson and Tabellini 2003; Tsebelis 2002). Theories ofproperty rights and public goodsprovision recognize that rulers are more likely to protect privateproperty rights and provide other typesof public goods when leaders are constrained (North and Weingast 1989).Theories of formal separationof powers predict that constraints on rulers reduce the size of governmentand increase protection ofcitizens’ rights (Persson, Roland, and Tabellini 1997). Formal constraintssuch as constitutions are one

type of constraint on rulers (Weingast 1997).Informal separation of local authority may also influence outcomes.Communities are polycentric(Ostrom 2005), and variation in village political institutions mayinfluence the ability to provide publicgoods (Agrawal and Gibson 1999). In a village characterized by separationof local political power,leaders face constraints on their ability to extract resources fromcitizens. These constraints reduce theability of leaders to expropriate citizen wealth.When village leaders are unconstrained and power is concentrated, rulershave incentives to over-extract citizen wealth and few incentives to use resources to provide

public goods. Over-extraction ofcitizen wealth creates disincentives for citizens to engage in productiveactivities. In the long run, thisundermines incentives for individuals to engage in productive activitiesand undermines the revenuebase of the community. Similarly, unconstrained rulers have few incentivesto provide public goods withany revenue they do extract. This leads to the first condition forcommunity-based public goodprovision:Condition 1: Separation of powers is necessary to ensure customaryorganizations provide public goodswithout expropriating citizen wealth.

This condition is satisfied in many Afghan villages. The Afghan system isoften characterized by localseparation of powers between maliks (village executives), shuras (villagecouncils), and mullahs(lawgivers/religious leaders). Decision-making authority over separatespheres of activity which impactcommunity life is divided by three main bodies, rather than concentratedinto the hands of any single



actor. Power is separated because organizations derive their right togovern from separate sources ofauthority or legitimacy. Shuras derive their authority from the will ofthe people in the community.Mullahs have religious legitimacy. The authority of maliks is derived fromtradition and government

recognition. Because each organization derives authority from separatesources, power within thecommunity is effectively separated across policy areas. The separation ofpowers in villages constrainsleadership and thereby credibly facilitates the provision of key publicgoods.The second condition for public goods provision is checks and balances.While separation of powersdemarcates appropriate use of authority within a sphere of authority,checks and balances implies thatother actors at the village level can intrude on these separate spheresprevent abuse of power. Checksbetween customary organizations are not possible unless there is a

separation of powers betweenthem. Checks and balances between organizations prevent competition thatundermines the ability ofthe government to provide public goods:Condition 2: Local checks and balances increase incentives of localleaders to provide public goods.



There are substantial checks that prevent abuse of authority in theAfghan political economy. Whileeach organization derives its authority and legitimacy from separatesources, individual customaryorganizations can constrain one another. While the analytical description

of separated powers mayimply a local presidential system (Shugart and Carey 1992), local politicsin Afghanistan centers aroundthe shura, making it is closer to what Lijphart (1999) describes to as a“consensus model.” Power isdispersed and separated in a variety of ways.For instance, the shura can depose a malik who is not responsive or failsto represent thecommunity interests to the government. Rahmani argues that the shura evenhas oversight overreligious leaders in the community (2006, 14-15). Religious leaders reportto the shura on issues relatedto the mosque and other issues. In turn, mullahs can veto programs or

policies that violate religiousnorms. The fluid and open membership of shuras ensures that power is notconcentrated in the handsof one group in the community. These checks and balances are expected toinfluence provision of publicgoods.The presence of economic veto players also serves as a structuralconstraint on the potential abuseof power within customary organizations. A veto player is an “individualor collective actors whoseagreement is necessary for a change in the status quo” (Tsebelis 2002,19). In the case of ruralAfghanistan, an economic veto player is usually a landowner. As

agriculture is the predominant sourceof rural income, I focus on patterns of landholdings in rural area. Whenlandholding is centralized,villagers have limited economic capacity to constrain customary leaders.When landholdings are moreequally distributed, the number of economic veto players necessarilyincreases thus constraining abuseof authority. This leads to the third condition for effective public goodsprovision:Condition 3: An egalitarian distribution of landholding increasesincentives for local leaders to providepublic goods.Centralization of local political authority is common in rural areas

throughout the developing world.This is the archetypal view held in the state formation and state-buildingliterature where centralizedauthority is linked to patterns of large landholding (Ertman 1997; Moore1966; Skocpol 1979). Asnoted earlier observers of Afghanistan have pointed to the relativelyegalitarian distribution of land inthe countryside as a source of consensual decision-making (Tapper 1984).Elphinstone first made this



observation in his documentation of Afghan history and customs in theearly 19th century:The estates of the proprietors are, of course, various in their extent;but on thewhole, the land is more equally divided in Afghanistan than in most othercountries. There are a great number of small proprietors who cultivate

their landthemselves as assisted by their families…The reason of the equal divisionofproperty will be easily perceived by adverting the nature of thegovernment oftribes…Extravagance or misfortune compel many to sell their lands;quarrels, or adesire for change, induce others to part with them, that they may quit theneighborhood in which they life, and the division of every man’s estateamong allhis sons, which is enjoined by the Mohammedan law, soon renders each lottoosmall to maintain its proprietor, who consequently either gives it up to

one of hisbrothers or sells it. … The number of tenants, in the common acceptationof theword, is not great in this country (1839, 389-390).



Severe displacement due to the war has limited the comparative analysisof current patterns of landownership. However, as recently as the late 1980s, distribution of land inAfghanistan was far moreegalitarian than it was in neighboring Iran, Pakistan, or India (Rubin

2002, 35-37). A practicalconsequence of smaller landholdings is greater local accountability.Village leaders are constrained inAfghanistan. These constraints, in the form of economic veto players,increase their ability to providepublic goods without extracting excessive amounts of citizen wealth.Leaders require a reliable revenue stream to provide public services. Theinformal accountabilitymechanism detailed in conditions one through four will not be effective ifthere is no tax that citizensare willing to accept and therefore a source of local revenues thatprovide the basis for public goodsprovision. The second condition for customary-based public good provision

is that rulers have the abilityto draw on sources of local revenues:Condition 4: Local organizations must have the ability to raise revenuesto provide public goods.

Sources of independent revenue may take several forms, including but notlimited to monetary orcash payments. Local tributes in the form of grain, wheat, or livestockcontributions are other forms ofrevenue generation. Leaders also extract revenue for resolving disputesand they have the power toredistribute wealth from one party to another. To settle a grievance, forexample, a customary leader

may call upon one individual to transfer wealth to another party as aremedy. Mullahs often expect ameal when they visit a home to settle a personal dispute.13 When revenuescome from external sources,as they often do in state-building projects, a local “rentier” economy isestablished which may notencourage prolonged provision of public goods.The tripartite system of government is characterized by threeaccountability mechanisms and anindependent revenue basis that makes the system self-enforcing. Separationof powers createsaccountability and an independent source of local revenue providesresources to provide public goods.

Both conditions are necessary for the provision of public goods at thecommunity level. It would bedifficult to speak of a separation of “powers” without access to localresources. Conversely, access toresources without accountability mechanisms is likely to lead tounconstrained authority anddictatorship. For example:A khan [malik] is not a feudal lord. Power in villages or tribes does notreside in



any one person or structure but in fluidly structured networks ofinfluence. Thesenetworks are not based on any single principle…some khans redistributewealththrough patronage and use it to create public goods (irrigation, influencewith or

protection from outside powers), this perception is not merely the resultofdomination and false consciousness. The pattern of patronage is based onqawm[tribe](Rubin 2002, 41-43).Political separation of powers and checks and balances are reinforced by alandholding structure thatdivides economic power.

13 Afghans and others in Central Asia have a wealthy collection of jokesdescribing this form of revenue generation.

Customary organizations in Afghanistan are not the only local

organizations that satisfy some theseconditions. Other organizations—specifically, those endogenous to statefailure such as warlords—areexpected to fail to provide public goods because they are unconstrained intheir ability to extract local



resources. Warlords and commanders lack accountability and separation ofpowers. They may have theability to tax, but they have no accountability mechanisms. This is why weexpect the effectiveness ofpublic goods provision to be superior under customary organizations than

under warlords. Warlords areakin to Olsonian “roving bandits,” while those exogenous to the statebehave as “stationary bandits”and thereby serve as the basis for long term, stable governance (Olson1993). Local non-customaryorganizations in Afghanistan, whether political parties, warlords andtheir command structure,development councils, lack many of the conditions outlined above,especially separation of powers andintegrated checks and balances that can prevent abuse. For example, CDCsdo not derive theirauthority from the people, despite the claims democratic elections. Theyare upwardly accountable not

to the community but to the NGO that provides them access to funds. Theysubmit paperwork detailingtheir activities not to community members or to district governmentofficials, but to the local NGOimplementing the project in the area. There are no self-enforcingaccountability mechanisms present inthese organizations.CDCs are also limited in their ability to raise local revenues. CDCsgenerally do not collect revenuesfrom individuals. These organizations redistribute resources accumulatedthrough non-productivesources, specifically from international financial assistance, and arethus “rentier” community

organizations. They are dependent on outside sources of revenue forsupport. When such support isabsent, as it often is, these organizations will have limitedopportunities to provide public goods becausethey have no revenue.In contrast, commanders or warlord networks are not rentier organizations.In most cases theysecure resources in the form of tributes directly from individuals.However, warlords are not constrainedby separated authority. Because they are not subject to any constraints,they can extract excessively.They become “roving bandits.”

The local government is also an important actor at the local level. Whilethe local government doeshave the ability to raise revenue, it is also subject to fewer constraintson its authority. WhileAfghanistan has a democratically elected Executive, Parliament, andProvincial Councils, district levelgovernment officials are not elected locally. They are appointed by thegovernment through opaque



procedures. As is common throughout much of the world, these appointeesusually do not come fromthe district where they are tapped to serve. Formal local governmentofficials are not constrained by anyother governmental bodies. However, they are often constrained byindividuals in the communities they

serve. The presence of institutional conditions that facilitate publicgoods provision in a variety ofcustomary and non-customary organizations are summarized below in Table 2.



Organization

Institutional Conditions

SeparatedPower

Checks andBalances

EconomicVetoPlayers

Source Localof Revenue

CustomaryOrganizations

x

x

x

x

Warlord Groups

x

x

x

Community

DevelopmentCouncils

x



Formal LocalGovernment

x

x

x

Table 2: Conditions for Public Good Provision and Local GovernanceThe theory has several implications:Implication 1: Public goods will be provided when customary organizationsare characterized by

accountability through informal separation of powers, increaseddistribution of economic power, andsources of revenue.Implication 2: Individuals who are members or leaders of customaryorganizations will not have betteraccess to public goods than non-members.Implication 3: The presence of non-accountable organizations (such aswarlords or CDCs) will fail toimprove access to public goods and services.Implication 4: Individuals who are members of non-customary socialorganizations will have greateraccess to public goods than other members of the community because theseorganizations are less

accountable.These implications can be tested by evaluating the relationship betweenlocal organizations andpublic goods provision. In a given village, I can measure if there is ashura, a CDC, both, or none of theseorganizations. A limitation with current data sets is that they do notprovide information on customaryactors aside from shuras in a community. However, the shura variable is ameasure of accountablecustomary organizations: where a shura is present it is almost alwaysaccompanied by a mullah and amalik. Not all villages are governed by a shura. Based on the theory ofcustomary organizations, I

hypothesize that the presence of a shura in a village will lead to greaterpublic good provision relative tovillages that do not have a shura. Conversely, the presence of a CDC in avillage will have limited or noeffect on public goods provision, because they are not accountable to thecitizens they are supposed toserve.



1.3 Measures, Hypotheses, and Models

In order to statistically analyze the provision of public goods in ruralAfghanistan, I utilize two nationally-representative surveys. The first is an extensive household survey, the

2005 National Rural VulnerabilityAssessment (NRVA) that was administered and designed by the Ministry ofRural Rehabilitation andDevelopment with support from the World Bank (Ministry of RuralRehabilitation and Development andCentral Statistics Office 2007). The purpose of the NRVA assessment,conducted across all 34 provincesin the country, was to provide vital information about rural livelihoodsin the absence of a nationalcensus. The sample size of this survey consists of more than 30,000households in more than 2,500communities. The second source of survey data is a public opinion surveydesigned by the Asia

Foundation with funding from the United States Agency for InternationalDevelopment (USAID) andadministered by the Afghan Center for Socio-economic and Opinion Research(ASCOR) based in Kabul.This survey was also conducted across every province in Afghanistan in2007 (Asia Foundation 2007).The survey interviewed more than 6,200 people in more than 570 communitiesfrom all provinces. Thepurpose of the public opinion survey was to gauge individual attitudes ona range of governance issues. Ilimit my analysis of both surveys to the rural subpopulations.14

14 The NRVA survey included three population strata: urban, rural, and the

nomadic Kuchi population. The AsiaFoundation survey did not stratify for the migratory Kuchi population andincluded them under the larger Pashtunsubpopulation (as Kuchis are Pashtun). I do not include urban or Kuchipopulations in the analysis.15 Whether a dispute or its resolution has been recorded measures not onlywhether the dispute has been resolvedbut whether record of the dispute was recorded with local officials. Thus,a dispute does not have to be resolved inorder to be recorded.16 According to the NRVA survey, 54 percent of the rural population ownagricultural land, while 5 percent manageland for others, and 42 percent own no garden or agricultural land. Out of

those that own land, only 3 percentreported having a dispute over their land. This number is surprisinglysmall given other qualitative reports on theescalation of land disputes in Afghanistan. One explanation for this couldbe that disputes do occur, but they occurbetween family members who may rarely seek recourse outside the family toresolve it. Another explanation isthat individuals may in fact be involved in a dispute but do not report itbecause they are aware they do not have



legal or any formal recourse as they are not entitled to use of the landin the first place. For example, mostrangeland in Afghanistan is owned by the government, not by privateindividuals. In any event, we want todescribe what determines the probability of disputes. However, I comparedresponses between male and females

in communities where both populations are enumerated and found nosignificant discrepancies.

1.3.1 Land Disputes

The first set of public goods analyzed relate to local land disputes.Using the NRVA 2005 householdlivelihoods survey, I analyze three measures related to land disputes andtheir resolution: whether ahousehold reported having a dispute, whether the dispute was resolved andwhether the dispute or itsresolution had been officially recorded.15 All three variables are

measures of community-based publicgoods. These models allow us to measure the relative impact of customaryand non-customaryorganizations on the provision of public goods related to local landdisputes.

The dependent variable in a first set of models (Models 1 and 2) iswhether a household has beenparty to a land dispute. Preventing such disputes is a public good: atraditional function of a localgoverning organization is to prevent disputes over land. If customaryorganizations are able to providepublic goods, then households in communities with such organizations

should have fewer disputes.16



A second set of models (Models 3 and 4) relates social organizations toresolution of a dispute. Thedependent variable in these models is whether a land dispute is resolved,given that a dispute occurred.In these models, resolution of land disputes is the measure of the public

good. If customaryorganizations are effective in providing the public good of disputeresolution, then households incommunities with customary organizations should be more likely to resolvetheir disputes.A third set of models (Models 5 and 6) analyze the probability that a landdispute, if resolved, wasrecorded in a court or in local official records. The ability to recordland disputes is a measure of theeffectiveness of local formal government to provide public goods.Recording the results of disputes alsomeasures the ability of customary organizations to facilitatecommunication with the local

government—a task the malik is supposed to play. Therefore, examiningwhether results of disputes areofficially recorded provides insights into several features of the localpolitical economy.The theory implies that the presence of a customary organization, measuredhere by the presenceof a shura in a community, is associated with increased provision ofpublic goods to households withaccess to them: there should be fewer disputes and more disputes should beresolved for households incommunities with a shura. The theory has no implication for whether or nota land dispute will beresolved in the community. Most of the business of the shura is unrecorded

(Stanfield et al. 2008).However, a shura should increase the ability of households to interactwith a government, relative tohouseholds that lack access to these organizations.Conversely, the theory implies CDCs will have limited or no impact onpublic goods provision. CDCslack accountability and independent authority to generate revenue. Lack ofconstraints undermines theability of these organizations to provide public goods. This leads to theprediction that the CDC will notpacify conflicts over land, increase resolution of disputes, or createincentives for people to record theirdisputes. However, proponents of CDCs as instruments of state building

would suggest that CDCs have apositive impact on the registration of land disputes. These independentvariables and the controlvariables are defined below.

Social Organizations

To measure the presence of customary organizations, I constructed avariable that indicates



whether a customary shura is present in a community. This variable is acomposite of responses by malefocus group as to whether a community had at least one of the followingcustomary organizations: jirga,elder shura, mixed gender shura, tribal shura, female shura, and maleshura.17 Similarly, I coded whether

a household had a CDC if the male focus group reported the presence of amale CDC, female CDC, or amixed gender CDC in their community.18 Communities could have more thanone kind of CDC orcustomary social organization.19

17 The NRVA dataset includes both household survey responses as well asone focus group in each community(population sampling unit). The focus group survey includes village-levelquestions such as the type of variety ofvillage governance structures in the community and general communitycharacteristics such as population.18 The presence of CDCs and shuras are not correlated in pairwise tests.

19 I rely on results from the male rather than the female focus groupsinterviews as female responses were notenumerated in all districts. In many southern regions of the countryinvolved in ongoing conflict, NRVA did notinterview female household members or conduct focus group discussions withwomen. To capture a morecomprehensive sample, I used responses from the male focus groupdiscussions.



Figure 6 shows that 75 percent of the rural population claimed to haveone type of customary socialorganization active in the community. This is surprising, as we wouldexpect such social organizations tobe ubiquitous in rural Afghanistan. Upon further exploration, it appears

that the number of socialorganizations is lower in areas around Kabul, the capital. As Kabul hasexperienced large migrations ofpopulation in recent years, we would expect fewer social organizations tobe present in these areas.Another area that show a significantly fewer social organizations thanother parts of the country is theset of provinces that constitute the “Hazarajat”. The Hazarajat namedafter the Shi’ite Hazara minoritythat inhabits the rugged mountainous territory of central Afghanistan. Dueto difficult terrain anddecreased availability of arable land, such communities will have fewercustomary organizations. Also, a

significant portion of the population in the region was resettled to thisarea from southern parts of thecountry nearly a century before by King Amanullah Khan who sought toredistribute their land to othergroups, causing further disruption to community governance organizations.The Central Hazarajat regionincludes most of the mountainous terrain in the center of the country asvisible in Figure 5.

[Figure 5: Physical Map of Afghanistan]The presence of a CDC was also coded from the male focus groupquestionnaire conducted in eachcommunity. A problem with this variable is that it does not indicate the

duration of CDC activity in thecommunity, as CDCs were rolled out over a period of several years,beginning in 2003. This is alimitation of the dataset that can be overcome by examining multiplesources of data.

We can also test the effectiveness of constraints in customaryorganizations by analyzing whetherhouseholds with a member in a shura or a CDC have increased access topublic goods. The theorypredicts that shura members will not have higher levels of access topublic goods. However, due to thelack of binding constraints preventing expropriation, CDC members should

have higher levels of accessto public goods. Predicted directions of variables related to landdisputes and social organizations aresummarized below in Table 3.

Public Good

Shura/Customary Organization



CDC

Prevention of Land Disputes

-

No effect

Resolution of Land Disputes

+

No effect

Official Recording of Land Dispute

No effect

+

Table 3: Hypothesized effect of local organizations on issues related toLand Disputes

Control Variables

In order to capture the impact of social organizations, I control for aseries of geographical variables,including six regional dummy variables (Central/Kabul, Eastern, SouthCentral, South Western, Northern,

and Central/Hazarajat).20 In addition to the regional variables, I alsocontrol for the altitude (in meters)of each community. Studies of civil war suggest that mountainous terrainis correlated with conflict, asmountainous regions are more difficult for a central government to controland areas provide effectivehideouts for insurgent groups (Fearon and Laitin 2003; Skaperdas 2008). Interms of social organizations,higher altitudes may decrease the presence or necessity for socialorganizations to form as they are thebyproduct of a need to manage scarce resources. The higher the altitude,the lower the likelihood offinding social organizations, both customary and non-customary. Higher

altitudes are not only difficultfor states to access, but they present challenges to aid organizations andothers wishing to create new

20 For identification purposes the Western variable is omitted inestimation.



institutions, such as CDCs. The models also control for demographicvariables, such as whether the headof household is literate and number of household members.

Measuring wealth in Afghanistan presents a challenge because personal

assets are not alwaysmeasured in cash or currency. Therefore, I include three separate measuresof household wealth:annual income, whether the house owns or manages agricultural land, andwhether the household ownslivestock.21 I also include a variable measuring the number of people inthe community. As size of thecommunity increases, local cooperation to provide public goods may be moredifficult to achieve.There are also three theoretically relevant variables that should beincluded in models of landdispute: possession of a land title (deed), whether the land wasinherited, and number of years a family

has lived in a community. Households that have deeds and that inheritedland should be less likely tohave disputes. Length of time in the community should also decreaselikelihood of a land dispute.Finally, to estimate whether a household records the results of a landdispute in local courts orofficial records, I include a measure of distance to a local market, whichin most cases is the districtcenter (woluswali). This variable measures the distance to the nearestmarket by foot during thesummertime. I expect that the likelihood of recording a dispute decreasesthe further a community isfrom the nearest market.

21 Pairwise tests show that the variables are not correlated.

1.3.2 Dispute Resolution

The second set of public goods I analyze are related to disputeresolution involving all types of localclaims, not just land disputes. To analyze the role of local organizationsin dispute resolution, I analyzedata from the Asia Foundation public opinion survey. Unlike the previousmodel, the unit of analysis inthis survey is the individual, not the household.A first model of dispute resolution (Model 7) asks individuals whether

their community has had aproblem in the past five years such that outside help or cooperation wasrequired to resolve it. A secondmodel (Model 8) asks if the community dispute was resolved. The next twodependent variables returnto the individual level of analysis exploring whether the individual hashad a dispute or formal case thatrequired formal adjudication by a state court or village/neighborhoodshura/jirga (Models 9 and 10) and



whether respondents were satisfied with the outcome of those proceedings(Models 11 and 12).The theory suggests that individuals who have access to a shura will beless likely to have a disputeor formal case that requires outside adjudication. The CDC should have noeffect on the likelihood that

an individual requires assistance to resolve disputes as the CDCs do nothave the same preventivebenefits that the shura provides.

A shura is also expected to increase satisfaction with outcomes withdispute resolution. Individualswho take their formal dispute to a shura should be satisfied with theoutcome due to the constraints onthese local organizations. Because local government organizations do nothave self-enforcing constraintson their activities, we can anticipate that individuals who take theircases to government courts will beless satisfied with the outcome. Appointments to courts and local

government positions are not yetconducted through a democratic or transparent process. I summarize thepredicted direction ofvariables related to general disputes and social organizations below inTable 4.



Public Good

Shura/CustomaryOrganization

CDC

Government

Prevention of CommunityDisputes

-

No effect

n/a

Resolution of CommunityDisputes

+

No effect

-

Prevention of Individual FormalDisputes

-

No effect

n/a

Satisfaction with Resolution ofIndividual Formal Disputes

+

n/a

-

Table 4: Hypothesized effect of local organizations on issues related toGeneral Disputes

Social Organizations



Measures of social organizations in the public opinion survey differ fromthose in the household survey.To measure the presence of a customary organization, I rely on individualagreement or disagreement toa statement that a shura or jirga is accessible.22 The shura/jirgavariable is not dichotomous, but ordinal.

The measure of CDC presence in a community is based on responses to aquestion about whetherindividuals are aware of such a council working in their village, adichotomous variable. Thirty-sevenpercent of those interviewed were aware of a CDC in their village.Fourteen percent said that shuraswere not accessible.23 This number is lower than the 25 percent ofcommunities in the NRVAcommunities reporting there was no shura in their community.24The survey asked an open-ended question about who they approached toresolve a dispute, whichallows us to test the ability of various organizations to resolvedisputes. The theory predicts that

individuals who approach shuras or maliks (customary organizations) aremore likely to have theirdisputes resolved than those approaching other, non-customaryorganizations. I also include subjectivemeasures of individual attitudes towards social organizations, such assatisfaction with the CDC andbeliefs about whether their shura and local courts represent local norms.

22 This measure is imperfect, as access to a community organization is notequivalent to measuring its presence.However, the survey asks a battery of subjective questions about theperformance of customary organizations (e.g.are they fair, do they represent local norms and values, etc.). I measured

the presence of customary organizationsusing this variable as it is the least subjective of all the questions onthe topic.23 When asked whether a shura or jirga was accessible to them, 4.3 percentstrongly disagreed, 9.7 percentdisagreed, 45.9 percent somewhat agreed, and 40.12 strong agreed.24 One explanation is that the NRVA questionnaire listed specific sub-classifications of shuras such as a qaumi shura(tribal shura), shura-ye mardomi (male shura), jirga, shura-ye rish-i-safidan (elder shura) and even whether thereare mixed gender shuras. In some parts of the country, a community may nothave a specific sub-classification fortheir shura and perhaps this is why the presence of such councils may be

underreported. The question may haveunnecessarily over-specified responses. The Asia Foundation survey did notmake such distinctions and merely asksabout generic shuras or jirgas.25 Variables for age, education, and income are measured on a scale of 1to 5. While in many countries educationand income are highly correlated, this is not true of Afghanistan:pairwise tests show no significant correlationbetween these variables.



Where possible, I use the same control variables for the public opiniondata that I use in thehousehold models. Controls included here include the number of people inthe household, income, levelof education, and age.25 I also include a measure for whether the

household listens to the radio. Radio



waves in Afghanistan are flooded with public service announcements by thegovernment, NGOs, andforeign and domestic military sources; therefore those who listen to radioshould be more informed ofreforms and more likely to engage others to resolve a dispute. They should

also be more likely toparticipate in CDC and other aid-related activities. Another key controlvariable is trust in others, whichshould have a preventative impact on the emergence of a dispute. Atrusting individual involved in adispute would be more likely to reach out to others for assistance.Finally, this survey included bothmen and women in the sample, allowing analysis of the effect of gender.

1.3.3 Local Safety and Security

The last set of public goods I investigate concern local safety andsecurity. The ability to resolve disputes

undoubtedly impacts perceptions of local security. By asking individualsdirectly about the local securitysituation in the community, we can test the degree to which informalorganizations provide this publicgood. The presence of regional variables takes on even greatersignificance in these models, as the levelof attacks from an insurgent Taliban, which opposes the central governmentand foreign forces, is higherin those regions neighboring Pakistan (Eastern, South Central, SouthWestern). While security is relatedto insurgent activity, the questions here are specific to community-levelissues, such as burglary,murder, and other crimes. To examine these questions, I rely on the Asia

Foundation public opinionsurvey.Models 13 and 14 test the factors that explain whether an individual fearsfor his or her personalsafety or the security of the family. Thirty percent of the ruralpopulation stated that they never fear fortheir safety, 22 percent said they rarely experience such fear, 38 percentsometimes feel fear, while 11percent of the population fears often for their safety.What is the relationship between organizations and security fears, if any?The theory predicts thatbecause of local accountability mechanisms, individuals having access tocustomary organizations should

feel more secure relative to those who do not. I hypothesize that accessto customary organizationsshould decrease individual fears regarding personal safety and security. Ialso hypothesize thatpresence of non-customary councils, in this case CDCs, should have noeffect on such fears.In Model 14 I include a set of dummy variables that measures confidence invarious security



organizations such as the army, police, as well as local militias. Ifpeople have confidence in the ability ofsuch organizations, then they should be less fearful for their security.The final set of outcomes explores whether a person has been a victim ofviolent crime, such as aphysical attack or beating, racketeering or extortion, burglary, or pick-

pocketing in the past year. Theseare outcomes that involve local security, which local governingorganizations should be able to monitorand control. Seventeen percent of the rural population indicated thatsomeone in their family had beenthe victim of violence in the past year. Model 15 analyzes therelationship between violent crime andthe presence of shuras and CDCs in communities. The presence of a shurashould decrease thelikelihood that an individual was a victim of a violent crime, while thepresence of a CDC should have noimpact on this outcome.

Does the presence of a local governing organization affect whether anindividual reports the crimeto an authority? The theory of local governance outlined above does notspeak to the relationshipbetween customary or non-customary organizations and the government.However, proponents of CDCsas instruments of state-building would predict that the CDC increaseslinks between individuals and the



government (Model 16). Whether or not an individual chooses to report acrime to the government is ameasure of such links.The final model (Model 17) investigates the relationship between reportingcrimes and trust in

shuras, CDCs, militias, and government departments such as local justiceofficials, public administrationin general, political parties, municipalities, and democratically electedprovincial councils. Individualswho have more trust in government agencies and officials will be morewilling to report their crimes tothe government. The same theoretical caveats from previous modelsregarding the relationshipbetween informal organizations and local government also apply here.

Public Good

Shura/Customary Organization

CDC

Individual Fears for PersonalSafety

-

No effect

Victim of Violent Crime

-

No effect

Report Crime to Authorities

n/a

+

Table 5: Hypothesized effect of local organizations on issues related to

local safety and security

1.4 Estimation and Results

Because all relevant dependent variables are ordinal or dichotomous, I uselogit and ordered logitestimators to analyze the role of customary social organizations in theprovision of public goods.



Estimation of models using both datasets account for the unique design ofeach survey by includinghousehold weights, provincial stratification, and identifies eachpopulation sampling unit (PSU) tocorrect for unobserved differences between members of different units thatmay affect standard error

estimates (Deaton 1997). Summar statistics for the relevant variables fromthe NRVA and AsiaFoundation surveys are listed in Table 6 and Table 7.

[Table 6: NRVA (2005) Summary Statistics]

[Table 7: Asia Foundation (2005) Summary Statistics]The results support the hypotheses that customary organizations play animportant role in manyaspects of local public goods provision. Customary organizations are notonly effective in providingpublic goods; individuals who use them when seeking remedies are moreoften satisfied with the

outcome. Consistent with the theoretical framework, CDCs did not have abeneficial effect on publicgoods provision. In many instances, the CDC actually had a negative impacton public goods provision.

It is possible that public good provision and the presence of CDCs areendogenous. CDCs may locatein a village based on the degree of public good provision. This impliesthat public good provision iscausing CDCs. However, there is limited evidence that CDCs locate inregions based on public goodprovision. During the time of the survey, the CDCs were widespread.However, if there is any possible

bias it would be that CDCs are located in areas with higher public goodprovision as CDCs may have beenfirst established in more easily accessible areas, which implies they aremore likely to have a positiveeffect on public good provision. The potential for locating in betterregions would bias the results infavor of CDCs. However, there is limited evidence CDCs have a positiveeffect, considering the possibility



of this bias. Because the CDCs are designed to infuse communities withresources to provide publicgoods, it is important to include them in any model estimating publicgoods provision.

1.4.1 Empirical Findings: Land Disputes

Customary organizations had the expected influence on both the emergenceof disputes and onwhether such disputes are resolved. The estimation shows that the presenceof a shura in a communityhas a more precisely estimated impact on the prevention of land disputes(Model 2): households incommunities with shuras are less likely to be involved in a conflict thanthose that do not. Interestingly,households with at least one member in a shura are more likely to be partyto a land dispute. Thisdemonstrates that shura members are not “above the law” and are subject to

constraints; otherwise itwould be unlikely that they would be challenged to a dispute (Model 4). Asthe theory predicted, thepresence of a CDC has no preventative impact. The results also show thatCDC members are no more orless likely to be parties to land dispute than other members of thecommunity. The findings suggestthat presence of customary organizations have more influence to deterconflict than do state-sponsoredproperty rights.

[Table 8: Estimation Results, Land Disputes, NRVA Data (2005)]The presence of both shuras and CDCs in a community increases the

likelihood that a land dispute isresolved, although we do not have information about whether individualswere satisfied with the resultsof the resolution. However, shuras have a more precisely estimated, largerin magnitude impact on theability to provide the public good of dispute resolution than do CDCs.CDC presence does not influence the recording of land disputes (Model 6).However, proponentsbelieve that the CDC should increase links to the government: as this isone of the stated program goals.Those who own livestock and who manage or own agricultural land are alsoless likely to record theirdisputes formally; however, those who have higher income are more likely

formally to record results oftheir disputes.Wealth has expected effects in some of the models. The inclusion of thethree wealth indicatorsdemonstrates that the type of household wealth may affect outcomes, asthose who have higher cashincomes are more likely to have their disputes resolved than those owningagricultural land or livestock.



The wealth measures do not seem to have a significant impact on whether ahousehold is party to adispute or whether disputes are resolved. The fact that wealth does nothave a significant impact onwhether a household is involved in a dispute or whether disputes areresolved indicates that wealth

does not influence access to some public goods. This provides furtherinsight into the egalitarian natureof local decision making. In this case, wealthier households do not appearto be above the law.

1.4.2 Empirical Findings: Disputes

Results from the public opinion survey are consistent with those from thehousehold vulnerabilityassessment. The consistency reinforces the validity of the conclusionsabout the relationship betweenvarieties of local organizations and public goods provision. The empiricalresults regarding general types

of dispute resolution suggest that CDCs may actually destabilize communitycooperation.

[Table 9: Estimation Results, General Disputes, Asia Foundation Survey ofthe Afghan People (2007)]



First, the presence of a shura or jirga does not have a significanteffect on whether a community hasa dispute for which outside assistance is required (Model 7). This findingcontradicts the theoreticalprediction as the theory predicted that customary organizations would have

a deterrent effect.Surprisingly, CDCs actually increase the likelihood of community-leveldisputes that require outsideassistance to resolve. The lack of self-enforcing accountabilitymechanisms within a CDC and the largeinfusions of cash the program injects into a community may be sources ofcontention that generate,rather than prevent, conflict.The results indicate that when community members use shura mechanisms toresolve disputes, thelikelihood of resolution increases (Model 8). Approaching the police alsohas a positive and significantimpact on community-level dispute resolution. However, when the community

approaches a malik or aCDC, it is no more likely to have the dispute resolved. The shura appearsto be the more effectiveorganization in providing this public good. Approaching the shura also hasa more positive effect thanapproaching the police.Similar patterns emerge in individual disputes. The presence of a shurahas no significant deterrenteffect on whether someone is party to a formal dispute; however, thepresence of a CDC in thecommunity again increases the likelihood that an individual has a formaldispute that requires outsideadjudication (Model 9). However, if an individual is satisfied with CDC

performance and she believes thatshuras follows local norms; she is less likely to be party to formaldisputes. This reveals that the qualityof local governance matters (Model 10).Finally, individuals who used shuras to resolve their dispute are far moresatisfied with the outcomethan those who used state courts (Model 11). A possible explanation forthis is that due to the lack ofbinding constraints on local government officials, individuals mayexperience corruption or otherdistortion when they use government offices to resolve disputes. Becausethere are no informal orformal constraints on their activity, they may be more corrupt than the

constrained customaryorganizations.The results from these estimates on dispute resolution indicate that forgeneral types of disputesshuras may have less of a deterrent effect than for land disputes,although they cause no harm.However, when both communities and individuals use shuras to resolveissues, shuras are not only



better able to resolve disputes, but individuals who use them are moresatisfied with the result thanthose who use state courts.

1.4.3 Empirical Findings: Local Safety and Security

The final set of results also provides support to the theoreticalargument that customary villageorganizations are effective in providing public goods at the communitylevel. Consistent with the theory,the CDCs do not enhance security through preventative measures.

[Table 10: Estimation Results, Local Safety and Security Issues, AsiaFoundation Survey of the AfghanPeople (2007)]When a shura or jirga is accessible, individuals are less likely to fearfor their safety and security.While the summary statistics indicate surprisingly high levels of supportand trust in both the Afghan

National Army and the police, such confidence may be somewhat superficialas confidence in the armyor police does not significantly reduce individual personal securityfears.



Accessibility to customary organizations decreases the probability thatan individual is subject toviolent crime. However, presence of a CDC in a community actuallyincreases the probability that aperson is the victim of violence. There is no empirical reason to expect

that CDCs are placed in areas thathave greater levels of violence. So this finding is surprising. Itreinforces earlier findings that CDCs mayactually disrupt rather than assist local dispute resolution and securitymechanisms.One of the stated goals of the CDCs is to build effective links betweencitizens and the government.However, there is no evidence that the presence of these bodies at thecommunity level increases theprobability that an individual will report a crime to authorities.Similarly, access to local courts does notimpact whether individuals will report crimes to authorities. However,access to a shura does increase

the likelihood that an individual who is victim of a crime will report it.Access to customaryorganizations in this case increases citizen access to formal government.However, we must be carefulwhen interpreting this result as such a result could be endogenous to thequality of local formalgovernment.When people have confidence in local, non-governmental militias, they aresignificantly less likely toreport crimes to authorities. Yet, confidence in shuras has a beneficialeffect on reporting crimes. Thisfinding provides evidence supporting the differentiation between informalorganizations endogenous

and exogenous to the breakdown of the state. Militias, by discouragingcitizens from reporting crimesauthorities, appear to replace the state or compete with it. On the otherhand shuras seem tocomplement, rather than replace, the formal local government. Customaryorganizations are thereforenot inherently opposed to the formal government.

1.5 Qualitative Case Studies

The quantitative evidence demonstrates the ability of customaryorganizations to provide diverse publicgoods despite central government weakness. Yet the empirical analysis

raised several more questions. Inthis final empirical section, I draw on case study evidence that supportsthe theoretical arguments anduntangles some of the surprising statistical results. Qualitative analysisalso allows us to understand thecontext in which public goods are provided. Below, I present three briefcase studies from datacollected in 2007 on the nature of public goods provision and informalorganizations in rural



Afghanistan. The case studies here are part of a larger set of 300interviews conducted in 32 villagesacross 16 districts in six provinces in rural Afghanistan.26 The casestudies were constructed from 8-12interviews or focus group discussions, equally divided among men andwomen, as well as observations

from each village.27

26 Provinces include Balkh, Bamiyan, Herat, Kabul, Kunduz, and Nangarhar.Security concerns limited site selection.Most of the interviews were conducted by a team of Afghan researchers fromthe Afghan Research and EvaluationUnit, an independent Afghan research organization based in Kabul for whomthis research was commissioned.However, I designed the interview guides and accompanied the researchersto field sites.27 All village and informant names in this section are fictitious. I donot provide these details to protect theconfidentiality of informants.

The case studies help us understand how customary organizations haveadapted to adversecircumstances and how they interact with a variety of actors andorganizations at the local level.Furthermore, they add to the evidence supporting the theoreticalassertions regarding the separation oflocal authority, checks and balances between organizations, economic vetoplayers created throughegalitarian land distribution, and the ability to generate revenue. Theorganization of the analysismirrors the issues addressed in the statistical analysis in the previoussection. The first case from Eastern



Afghanistan deals with land disputes. The second case from CentralAfghanistan explores issues ofgeneral dispute resolution. The final case from Northern Afghanistanhighlights issues of local security aswell as insight into how the introduction of new organizations can

destabilize patterns of localcooperation.

Yakakhak Village, Behsod District, Nangarhar Province (EasternAfghanistan)

The first case, from eastern Nangarhar Province on the border withPakistan, illustrates dynamics of landconflict and the role customary leaders play in resolving issues. In thiscase, the malik was able toresolve a large land dispute and manage the transfer of wealth from oneparty to another. The case alsohighlights how communities deal with corruption in customary organizations

through local checks andbalances. While customary leaders may have opportunities to expropriatewealth, they may be limitedin their ability to do so for very long. Finally, it demonstrates theprevious finding that wealthyindividuals are not above the law when it comes to land disputes.

Yakakhak is a village of about 1,400 people in Behsod District inNangarhar Province onAfghanistan’s eastern border with Pakistan. The village is located about10 kilometers from JalalabadCity, one of the largest cities in Afghanistan. The population of thecommunity is a mix of settled

Pashtun Kuchi nomads and Khogiani Pashtun tribes who in recent decadesemigrated from neighboringKunar Province.28 There is also a small Shi’a Hazara group in thecommunity. According to villagers,there are 22 farms in the village, which allows for small landholdings.Unlike many other areas of thecountry, villagers feel there is adequate land in the community, but saidthey never had enough inputssuch as seeds to produce abundant and profitable harvests.29

28 The two main Pashtun tribes are Ghilzai and Durrani. Khogiani are asubtribe of the Durrani while most Kuchisare Ghilzai. Most Afghan Kings and leaders, including Hamid Karzai, have

been from the Durrani tribe while most ofthe most of the leadership of the Afghan Taliban movement have beenGhilzai. The Khogiani here often referred tothemselves as Khogiani or Kunari. They maintain links with relatives inKunar through marriage. During periods offighting this group migrated to Kunar.29 Interview, Mother of Malik, Yakakhak Village, Behsod District,Nangarhar Province, September 2007.



30 Interview, Young Woman, Yakakhak Village, Behsod District, NangarharProvince, October 2007.

The village has an active shura as well as a several mullahs and a malik.However, the communityrecently replaced its malik. Villagers complained that the previous malik

was corrupt, detailing how heexpropriated external assistance for himself including food aid and cowsprovided through NGO animalhusbandry projects. Even worse, he was allowing his greed to influenceshura decision making: “Themalik was not a good man. He would sit in the marakas and jirgas and madedecisions on behalf ofthose who could give him the biggest bribe.”30 Out of frustration, thevillagers appealed to a young manwhose father was a malik before the war to serve in place of the corruptmalik. The villagers appealedto him several times, but he was not interested in serving because he hadother interests and work,

after some cajoling, he took the position. The newly selected malik wasonly 30 years old and was froma Kuchi family. Villagers did not have a formal election for thisposition; they selected him during ameeting of the shura. He was chosen not only because of his personalattributes, but also because of hisfamily’s honest reputation in village decision making.

As is the case throughout Afghanistan, the cessation of large scaleviolent conflict resulted in thereturn of millions of refugees to the country. The return promptedconflict over land as returningfamilies claimed ownership of the same parcel of land. Successive

governments handed out their owntitles, making definitive land ownership uncertain. Some families remainedduring the war and others



fled. The shura in Yakakhak handled most of the land disputes. However, apowerful commander hadrecently returned to the village after nearly 30 years. Upon his return heclaimed a large parcel of landthat others had lived on and cultivated in his absence:31

31 Interview, Farmer, Yakakhak Village, Behsod District, NangarharProvince, October 2007.32 Interview, Farmer, Yakakhak Village, Behsod District, NangarharProvince, October 2007.33 Interview, Malik, Yakakhak Village, Behsod District, NangarharProvince, September 2007.34 Wak is an a priori commitment given by both parties whereby they swearto abide by the decision of the elders,regardless of the outcome.35 Due to high illiteracy rates in Afghanistan, fingerprints are used inplace of signatures on many officialdocuments as many Afghans are unable to sign their names.

36 Interview, Farmer, Yakakhak Village, Behsod District, NangarharProvince, September 2007.

Some Hazara people from our village had land and one commander came andtook his land. The Hazara man tried to take his land back from thecommanderbut he could not. The commander said that the land was his, but he hadn’tlivedin our village for 28 years! The shura divided the land. They gave one-half for theHazara and one-half to the commander. In the end, the Hazara agreed to thesettlement that the shura negotiated. Instead of taking the land, thecommander

gave him 2 million Afghani ($40,000) for the land.32Despite the wealth of the commander, in this community he was not abovethe law. He had to use theshura process to resolve his dispute with the much less wealthy Hazarafarmer. The shura required thatthe commander pay the poorer Hazara for the land, regardless of hispossession of a land title. Thecommunity used the shura to resolve this dispute. However, the communityhas several types of shuras.There is a community shura and a larger inter-communal shura. Also eachethnic and religious group hasits own group of elders that forms the basis of a smaller, sub-shura.According to the malik:

“We have a shura with 13 people and they usually resolve conflicts. Thisshura iscomposed of elders who find who is guilty and not guilty in our village.We haveanother larger shura called a meshrano jirga that has about 21 membersthatincludes our settlement as well as neighboring villages. …There areseveral ethnic



groups here so they are all represented there.” 33The malik indicated that responsibility for resolving conflicts lies withthe shura, not the malik. Anelderly man described the process of dispute resolution, as it applied torecent land conflicts:

Afghan people are very traditional and they live by different customs.Peopleusually resolve their problems by discussion in the village, and rish-i-safidan(elders) resolve most village disputes. The people usually refer theirconflicts toelders, and they try to resolve all the problems. Elders talk with bothsides andthen they talk with each other; finally, if both parties give wak(authority)34 to theelders then they will make a decision and both sides have to accept it.The eldersmake their decision according Shari’a and customs of Afghanistan. Another

important thing you should know is that elders must take shast(fingerprints)35 ofthe people before a decision is made and then they cannot disobey thedecision.36

He said that the role of the malik in the village is to communicateindividual needs to the governmentand then help the government implement policies in the village. Forexample, “the woluswal [district



governor] wants us to stop growing poppies and he wants to use the eldersof the community tocommunicate this to the villagers. He says that if we plant any poppies wewill not receive any assistancefrom the government.”37

37 Interview, Malik, Yakakhak Village, Behsod District, NangarharProvince, September 2007.38 Interview, Mother of malik, Yakakhak Village, Behsod District,Nangarhar Province, September 2007.39 The village is not listed in official population numbers issued by theCentral Statistics Office. All population datain this paper is from official government statistics provided by thisOffice. Data is available for download athttp://www.cso.gov.af.40 In Dari a subdistrict is aloqadari. The Taliban eliminated thesubdistrict system. The aloqadari system is no longerused. There are no subdistricts remaining in Afghanistan; all aloqadari

have become full districts [woluswali].

There is tension in the community between settled Pashtun Kuchi nomadswho were given deeds bythe Communist Government during the 1980s and the Khogiani tribalpopulation. However, the mullahof the community is aware of these tensions and although he himself is aKhogiani, he has tried tointegrate the Kuchi population into the community. According to themalik’s mother, “the mullah in thevillage teaches Islamic books to the children. Some Kuchis are coming intoour mosque because ourmullah is kind to them [despite tensions in the community].”38

Villagers were not aware of a CDC in the area. The new malik said thatthere was a CDC in one partof the community, but the FP put it with a CDC in another neighboringvillage. The community had norole in determining the boundaries of the CDC. Villagers were keen to havea CDC because they hadheard advertisements for the program on the radio and had heard of projectfunds and infrastructurethat neighboring villages received.The case illustrates that customary leaders can also be corrupt, yet theircorruption is tempered bythe presence of other bodies in the community which act to constrain themor remove them from

power after a series of abuses. While authority is separated, the checksand balances that exist betweencustomary organizations can work to prevent long-term expropriation ofcitizen wealth. The case alsohighlights the increasing pressure put on customary organizations toresolve land disputes due to thelarge number of returnees to communities since 2001.



Rashidan Village, Saighan District, Bamiyan Province (Central HazarajatAfghanistan)

This case from Bamiyan Province in the Central Hazarajat highlands,illustrates the role customaryorganizations play in the resolution of general disputes. It lends insight

into the dynamic and adaptivenature of customary organizations but also highlights the important rolethey play in maintaining localsecurity and preventing violence. Customary organizations have not onlychanged their names, but thelandowners who once dominated the organizations have been driven out ofthe community. The casestudy also illustrates that CDC funds can provide badly neededinfrastructure to communities, butunderscores the difficulties encountered by NGO staff, if they are notfrom the community or even theprovince, to implement the program: they are not accountable to villagers.According to members of the

village, there are approximately 270 households in Rashidan (about 1,500people).39 The community isabout two kilometers from the district center, giving it access togovernment offices. The entire districtof Saighan is quite small, with a population of only 17,000. Prior to theTaliban, Saighan was a subdistrictof neighboring Kahmard District. 40 According to the district governor,two-thirds of the population areFarsi speakers (loosely referred to as Tajiks) while the remaining one-third are Hazara.



In Bamiyan province, villagers had particularly bad memories of highlyextractive landlords, arbabs,who taxed them excessively at the behest of the government more thanthirty years ago. According tointerviews, the landholdings of the arbabs had been divided byte the

people and commanders and thearbabs themselves were driven away in the 1970s and the 1980s. Yet thearbab played an importantgoverning role as a broker between the community and the government.According to the villagers, theCommunist Khalq Party41 was responsible for this dissolving the arbabsystem. In its place, villagerscreated a nomayenda (“representative”) system that had many of the sameresponsibilities.42 It isunclear whether the Khalqis established this system or whether it emergedout of community needs.The title nomayenda is used exclusively in Bamiyan Province to indicate avillage executive.

Nomayendas and villagers with whom I spoke in the district asserted thatthe nomayenda representedthe will of the people to the government.

41 The Khalq (People’s Party), was one of the two main Communist partiesin Afghanistan.42 While the Khalq Party sought to disrupt large landholders andtraditional power brokers, it is unclear why thetitle nomayendas surfaces only in Bamiyan province and not in other areas.43 Interview, mullah/malik, Rashidan Village, Saighan District, BamiyanProvince July 2007.44 Police Commander is a district police chief; an official governmentposition.

45 Interview, Male Villager, Age 25, Rashidan Village, Saighan District,Bamiyan Province, July 2007.

External conflict dynamics had an adverse effect on local cooperation.According to the nomayendaof the village (who is also a mullah), most homes in the district weredestroyed during the war by theSoviets, “During the war with the Russians, people would go to Pakistanand they would bring guns backto fight the Russians. People were united then, but when the Russiansleft, civil war began.”43 During theCivil War between mujahedeen groups in the 1990s, there was heavy fightingbetween Northern

Alliance and Hazara militias in the district. Many Tajiks emigrated out ofthe district as a result, but mosthave since returned. According to villagers, there are now good relationsbetween the groups. Themostly-Pashtun Taliban brutalized Shi’a Hazara communities in Afghanistanbecause they were notSunni. The malik said that the cruelty of the Taliban brought bothcommunities closer together:



I was the nomayenda for two or three years during the regime of theTaliban.During that period some Hazara people came to me and asked that Irepresentthem because they needed someone to help them and they were afraid of theTaliban at that time. I accepted their nomayendagi. I accepted their

suggestionthat I be their representative. When they had some business in thedistrict, firstthey would come to me. I would try to resolve their problems alone. Duringthattime I was very busy. Every day, every moment, the Taliban police werecoming tome and they were asking me to do things for them in the community. Theywouldalways take me to different villages to help them resolve issues.44

The jihadi commanders active in the area were killed during the war, sothe area has returned to relative

peace.45 The area is also fairly remote and does not have substantial landor other resourceendowments.

Religious leaders regularly interacted with members of the shura. Whilethe malik is also a mullah,the community has an ulama shura or a council of religious scholars.Despite the fact that the malik is areligious leader, he has disputes interpreting Islamic law with the ulama.The malik told of an NGO thatcame to the village to teach children how to play musical instruments. Hesaid the ulama complainedabout them, believing that music would bring social problems to the

community. The organization thenleft the area because it did not want to be a source of conflict in thecommunity. The malik said, “I told



the ulama shura they should have stayed out of this…They should have leftthis organization alone, butthey did not accept my wish.”46Villagers had a great amount of reverence for the woluswal [districtgovernor] in this area. Unlike

woluswals in most other districts, this woluswal himself was from thedistrict and he had served in theposition since the fall of the Taliban nearly six years before. Severalvillagers repeated the story of howthe woluswal’s father was shot on his son’s wedding day by a NorthernAlliance group fighting Sovietswho thought his father was a Khalqi (Communist) more than twenty yearsago.

46 Interview, Mullah/Malik, Rashidan Village, Saighan District, BamiyanProvince July 2007.47 Villagers have this option because the woluswali offices are very closeto the village.

48 Interview, Malik/Mullah, Rashidan Village, Saighan District, BamiyanProvince, July 2007.49 Focus group discussion, women, Rashidan Village, Saighan District,Bamiyan Province, July 2007.

When asked about how they resolve conflicts, all those intervieweddescribed the same procedure:they first try to solve the dispute between internally, between parties;if the dispute cannot be solvedinternally, they then go to the shura for counsel; if the shura hasdifficulty send the dispute to thewoluswal;47 because the woluswal “respects” the authority of the elders,he sends the dispute back to

the village for adjudication:

A few days ago, there was one problem between two people. One side had adonkey. Their donkey was running around in the neighbor’s field and eatingtheirwheat. The person went to the district security commander (police chief)andthen to the woluswal. The woluswal sent the dispute back to me. And I satbetween them. I told them that this is not such a big problem. If thedonkey eatsa lot of wheat, then your neighbor will simply pay you some money. I toldthemthat I didn’t want to hear anymore about this donkey.”48

The villagers appointed the mullah to be the head of the CDC. There wereno complaints of corruptionin the village. However, villagers did not view the CDC as anything morethan an organization set up byan NGO for the purposes of implementing a reconstruction project. Womendid not participate in itsactivities. There were some complaints about corruption in the FP workingin the area. A retaining wall



built with CDC funds had collapsed since its construction one year ago.Villagers said that engineersworking for the FP in the district were corrupt and skimped onconstruction materials. Womencomplained about the conduct of elections for female CDC members:

On election day, each candidate had their picture on the ballot box sopeopledistributed the pictures so women would know who to vote form. The men whodistributed the pictures promised that if they voted for their relative,they wouldbe given some money. But after the elections, the candidates did not givemoneyas the promised.49

The malik system in Saighan district is unique because the previouslandlords who held leadershipposition were driven out. In this case, the malik system regenerateditself during times of fighting and

was able expand its scope to protect outside groups. Demand for thefunctions of the organizationscontinued to arise. As a result, villagers created a village governancestructure that functioned along thesame lines as the previous system under a different name. The case alsohighlights the difficulties ofcreating new organizations in communities that are not subject tomechanisms of local accountability.



This case also illustrates how religious leaders and other leaders canoperate in unique policy domainsunder a separated system, but have the right to check one another.

Manzil Bagh Village, Hazrati Imam Sahib District, Kunduz Province

(Northern Afghanistan)

The final case study illustrates how the influx of funds gained from non-productive sources of income,such as aid, can potentially disrupt patterns of customary decision-makingand destabilize localcooperation. The statistical models provided surprising evidence that CDCsmay actually increase conflictin a community. The story of this desert village, in northern KunduzProvince, help explain this finding.External assistance encouraged the return of “roving bandits,” such ascommanders, to the community.The lack of self-enforcing accountability mechanisms within the CDC and

other aid-related shurasaccompanied by large infusions of cash can cause community contention.Manzil Bagh, population 2,000, is a village in Hazrati Imam Sahib Districtin Kunduz Province(northern Afghanistan). The population of the village is mostly Uzbek,although there are a few Turkmenand Pashtun families in the area. The village is located about 15kilometers from the district center.Most villagers migrated to Pakistan, Iran, Kunduz City (the provincialcapital), as well as Kabul during thewar. Homes in the village were destroyed during two rounds of fighting: inthe 1980s, when villagersfought the Russians, and during the late 1990s when Northern Alliance

forces fought the Taliban. Thereare significant amounts of landless families in the community and water isscarce. Men in the village areemployed harvesting wheat and corn while women weave carpets. Some menwork as daily laborers(mardikar).

Villagers described their respect for the malik. He came from a piousfamily.50 The village has a tribalshura (qaumi shura) where elders make decisions and resolve disputes. Bothmen and women said thatif they had a dispute in the village, they would normally take theirproblem to the elders and the malik,

although recent events caused disruption to these patterns of governance.If they could not resolve thedispute they would then go to the district government (woluswali).51Customary leaders were activeresolving domestic disputes.52 For example:

50 In this province, maliks are referred to by the title arbob.51 Interview, Young Woman, Manzil Magh Village, Hazrati Imam Sahibdistrict, Kunduz province, June 2007.



52 Interview, Middle-aged Woman, Manzil Bagh Village, Hazrati Imam SahibDistrict, Kunduz Province, June 2007.53 Interview, Dehqan Yasin, Manzil Bagh Village, Hazrati Imam SahibDistrict, Kunduz Province.

There was a wedding party between two villages [and a large bride price

waspaid] to the family of the bride. After the wedding the bride was nothappy withthe groom and wanted to separate from her husband. The elders and thereligious leaders sat together and resolved the issue so that the couplecouldpeacefully separate.53The elders were able to redistribute wealth from one family to another toensure the resolution of thedispute.

However, villagers complained about corruption in the CDC. When theproject first started in the

village, the people selected their malik to be the head of theorganization (through consensus voting,not through a ballot box). Villagers made no contributions to the CDCactivities, but instead werepromised salaries for work building projects. This is a common practiceamong CDCs. However, one



metal worker said he installed many of the hand pumps built by NGOs in thevillage, but he has neverbeen paid for his labor or materials as he was promised.54

54 Interview, Dehqan Yasin, Manzil Bagh Village, Hazrati Imam Sahib

District, Kunduz Province.55 Interview, Commander, Manzil Bagh Village, Hazrati Imam Sahib District,Kunduz Province, June 2007.56 Interview, Deputy Director of CDC, Manzil Bagh Village, Hazrati imamSahib District, Kunduz Province, June 2007.57 Interview, Commander, Manzil Bagh Village Imam Sahib District, June2007.58 Interview, Mechanic, Manzil Bagh Village, Hazrati Imam Sahib District,Kunduz Province, June 2007.

The CDC was one of several NGO projects in the community. As the amountof money flowing intothe village increased, villagers complained that local commanders took

greater interest in villageactivities. In the years since the war ended, commanders had receded, yetthe money provided byexternal assistance encouraged them to reappear. The people feared thecommander, as he was part ofGeneral Abdul Rashid Dostum’s Milli-ye Junbish political party. When thecommander took charge ofvillage activities, he encouraged the malik to resign his position anddismantled the beginnings of femaleparticipation. When asked, the commander said that he had done such a goodjob managing a GermanNGO project (another “development shura”) that the villagers voluntarilydecided to have reelections

and that the incumbent malik “decided not to run against me.”55 People inthe village, including thedeputy director (moween)56 did not seem to have information about CDCmeetings or any otheractivities since the commander wrestled control of the organization fromthe community.

While people feared the commander and discussed his corruption, they alsospoke highly of how hehandled security issues. He had access to a larger network of commandersthat customary leaders wereusually unable to access. The commander bragged openly about how hebrought order to the village

with his iron fist. Several villagers told of how he captured three youngmen who were sexually abusingboys in the village. “Actually, I’m not really interested in being thearbab [malik] in this village andsolving all these disputes. I have wanted to resign many times but mypeople say, ‘what will we do if youresign?’”57



According to other villagers, the new head of the CDC (the commander)bought two cars for himselfsince the CDC started its work. They also speculated that the CDC cashier,a close ally of the commander,bought two cows with CDC money.58 Despite these complaints, the villagersdid see results from several

donor projects such as water wells, culverts, as well as a newly graveledroad. Although, theyspeculated that more could have been done with the vast amount of fundsthe commander hadreceived. Since the commander reemerged in the village. Local decisionmaking through the customaryorganization had continued informally but not publically, as the malikbecame increasingly afraid of thepower of the commander.Women were not participating in village activities. The women said thatthe FP came to the villageand themselves selected the female participants to the CDC. None of thevillagers, aside from the

commander, were aware that the CDC was a government project. They believedit was just an NGOproject, like so many that had come before it.This case illustrates that local separation of powers and local checks andbalances that encouragemore legitimate use of village resources can be destabilized by outsidegroups. Most importantly, thiscase highlights the important distinction between informal organizationsendogenous and exogenous tothe breakdown and reconstruction of the state.



1.6 Conclusion

Can public goods be provided in a failed state? If so, what mechanismsgovern their provision? Idistinguished between customary and non-customary organizations and

developed a theory predictingthe conditions under which local governance organizations can be effectivein providing public goods. Inthe context of rural Afghanistan, customary organizations meet theconditions that encourage self-enforcing local governance and public goods provision. The evidencesupported the implications of thetheory. By focusing on the productive role of customary organizations inthe provision of public goodsand differentiating between customary and non-customary organizations, Ihave shed light on themicro-foundations of state building in a post-conflict society.Community-scale public goods such as dispute resolution and safety and

security are provided bycustomary organizations. However, such goods are neither provided bygovernment authorities nornewly-created development councils. Customary organizations are far fromperfect. They can also besources of predation and corruption, and the conditions that encouragelocal accountability do not existin every community.Constraints within village organizations provide an explanation of whythese organizations aregenerally effective. Shuras (village councils), maliks (executives), andmullahs (religious leaders) are notonly accountable to one another in a separated system; they are also

directly accountable to citizens inthe community. Customary leaders are able to resolve disputes and provideother goods to citizensbecause they extract a fee for their services but also because they areaccountable for what theyextract.The case studies elaborate results from the statistical analysis andillustrate why the presence ofnon-customary organizations, such as CDCs or warlords, may destabilizelocal cooperation or in theworst case, cause conflict or tension in communities.The representatives to CDCs should be elected by villagers, yet theseelections, if they do occur, are

not sufficient to create conditions for accountability. In practice, CDCsare neither accountable tocitizens nor to the local government. They are accountable only to the(usually) international NGO towhich they report their activities. Furthermore, the creation of a CDCcreates only one body. Powerwithin these organizations is not distributed; it is concentrated. Whilethe CDC is supposed to derive its



legitimacy from the community, the large influx of resources that the CDCsprovide, if not accompaniedby effective monitoring, can destabilize local cooperation. The presenceof such councils creates arentier effect at the community level where resources, gained through non-productive processes,

provides temporary access to public goods and services, but does notencourage the development oflocal accountability measures.Several findings are worrisome about the impact of CDCs on broaderoutcomes in the community.For example, the presence of a CDC seems to increase the probability thata community is involved in adispute that it cannot resolve itself. Also, presence of a CDC increasesthe odds that an individual will beinvolved in a dispute as well as be the victim of a violent crime.Presence of a CDC has no significantimpact on “state building” or building links between individuals and localgovernment.

However, these findings yield more puzzles: if customary organizationsare effective at providingpublic goods and services, why does Afghanistan remain so poor? Why arehuman developmentindicators so horrifically low? Such observations suggest that there arelimits to customary social



organizations. While they can provide certain kinds of public goods andact as a deterrent to disputesand other conflicts, they are not a panacea. The next problem isexplaining the limits of communityorganizations.



Mean

Estimate

Std. Err.

[95% Conf.

Interval]

Altitude (meters)

1435.262

22.56536

1391.014

1479.51

Annual Income (ln)

10.69384

0.014812

10.6648

10.72289

CDC in Community

0.344972

0.010986

0.32343

0.366513

CDC Member

0.076882



0.003847

0.069339

0.084425

Central/Kabul

0.063887

0.005362

0.053373

0.0744

Central/Hazarajat

0.097589

0.007132

0.083605

0.111573

Deed to Land

0.477316

0.010157

0.4574

0.497232

Distance to Market in Summer by Foot

3.779417

0.052083

3.677277

3.881558

Eastern

0.107476

0.006858

0.094028



0.120924

HH Member Count

7.385536

0.040494

7.306132

7.46494

HH own agricultural Land

0.713064

0.009433

0.694567

0.73156

HH own Livestock

0.731609

0.006279

0.719298

0.74392

Inherited Dwelling

0.8261

0.005418

0.815476

0.836724

Land Dispute

0.027449

0.001693

0.024129

0.030768

Land Dispute Recorded



0.322814

0.027475

0.268809

0.376819

Land Dispute Resolved

0.485994

0.033214

0.420611

0.551377

Longitude

67.21815

0.06156

67.09744

67.33887

Northern

0.286476

0.010238

0.266399

0.306552

Read Letter

0.294632

0.008009

0.278928

0.310337

Shura in Community

0.748541

0.010056



0.728822

0.768261

Shura Member

0.165213

0.00589

0.153663

0.176763

South Central

0.187588

0.009775

0.168421

0.206755

South Western

0.122292

0.008459

0.105706

0.138879

Years in Community

25.13153

0.368338

24.40923

25.85382

N

30822



PSUs

2597

Table 6: NRVA (2005) Summary Statistics



ElderShura

MaleShura

TribalShura

Jirga

FemaleShura

MixedGenderShura

Male CDC

FemaleCDC

MixedGenderCDC

TotalShura

Total CDC

Central/Kabul

14.7%

4.4%

45.9%

11.8%

2.9%

0.0%

51.1%

14.1%

14.0%

56.9%



62.9%

Eastern

15.6%

36.3%

41.1%

18.2%

2.1%

0.4%

34.0%

9.1%

0.4%

93.0%

34.4%

South Central

25.1%

1.8%

66.6%

3.6%

0.9%

0.0%

21.5%

2.7%

2.4%

82.7%

23.9%

South Western

21.3%



24.2%

54.2%

7.2%

0.5%

0.5%

21.0%

1.1%

1.0%

86.3%

22.0%

Western

16.1%

30.2%

21.6%

0.7%

5.2%

1.7%

31.5%

12.2%

11.1%

63.7%

41.2%

Central/Hazarajat

12.5%

5.7%

34.9%

0.6%



1.6%

2.3%

17.4%

6.0%

15.2%

53.1%

30.6%

Northern

26.1%

8.9%

53.7%

6.3%

5.3%

4.0%

23.0%

10.6%

23.5%

73.4%

41.5%

Average

20.7%

15.0%

47.5%

6.4%

3.2%

1.8%

26.5%



8.2%

11.7%

74.2%

36.2%

0%

10%

20%

30%

40%

50%

60%

70%

80%

90%

100%

Percentage

Village Organizations by Region

Percentages based on responses to community-level focus group, notindividual level responses.

Figure 4: Source Male Focus Group Interviews, NRVA (2005)



C:\Users\Jennifer\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Windows\Temporary InternetFiles\Content.Word\Afghanistan_phys_4c.jpg

Figure 5: Physical Map of Afghanistan



Mean

Estimate

Std. Err.

[95% Conf.

Interval]

Age

33.84515

0.216036

33.42083

34.26947

Approach CDC

0.009779

0.001944

0.00596

0.013597

Approach Foreign Forces

0.001481

0.000534

0.000432

0.002529

Approach Govt. Agent

0.007427

0.001672

0.004143

0.010711

Approach Malik



0.02401

0.003172

0.017781

0.03024

Approach MoP

0.012632

0.002942

0.006853

0.018411

Approach Police

0.034311

0.003619

0.027202

0.04142

Approach Shura

0.061083

0.005313

0.050647

0.071519

Approach Woluswali

0.04642

0.004042

0.038481

0.05436

CDC in Community

0.367749

0.015009



0.338268

0.397229

CDC Satisfaction (1-5 scale]

3.154236

0.032884

3.089595

3.218877

Central/Hazarajat

0.090989

0.012629

0.066184

0.115793

Central/Kabul

0.089947

0.012366

0.065659

0.114235

Confidence in Army

0.878158

0.009274

0.859943

0.896373

Confidence in Municipality

0.349682

0.014451

0.321297

0.378066



Confidence in Pol. Parties

0.379951

0.013561

0.353316

0.406586

Confidence in Police

0.822414

0.010461

0.801866

0.842962

Confident in CDCs

0.685142

0.012604

0.660386

0.709899

Confident in Govt. Justice

0.481619

0.013735

0.454642

0.508597

Confident in Militias

0.349682

0.014451

0.321297

0.378066

Confident in Municipality

0.485153



0.014543

0.456589

0.513717

Confident in Provincial Council

0.725426

0.011983

0.70189

0.748962

Confident in Public Admin

0.615769

0.013318

0.589611

0.641928

Confident in Shura/Jirga

0.741943

0.011762

0.71884

0.765045

Court Accessible

2.971833

0.024416

2.923876

3.019789

Court Reflect Local Norms

2.628532

0.026071

2.577325



2.679738

Did Report Crime

0.64174

0.021597

0.59927

0.68421

Dispute Solved

0.502762

0.025958

0.451694

0.553831

Eastern

0.107809

0.013512

0.08127

0.134349

Education

2.388417

0.050332

2.289559

2.487275

Fear Safety

2.301527

0.030251

2.24211

2.360944

Female



0.500068

0.021916

0.457021

0.543114

Had Formal Dispute

0.154945

0.008413

0.138421

0.171469

Income [1 to 5 scale]

2.960826

0.046163

2.870156

3.051496

Listen to Radio

0.714411

0.011224

0.692365

0.736457

No People in HH

9.380056

0.104102

9.175585

9.584528

Northern

0.326131

0.020322



0.286217

0.366045

Outside Help Needed

0.174532

0.009428

0.156015

0.193049

Satisfied with Resolution

0.719647

0.020483

0.67933

0.759964

Shura/Jirga Accessible [1 to 5 scale]

3.217758

0.024349

3.169933

3.265583

Shuras are Fair [1 to 5 scale]

3.103977

0.022596

3.059595

3.14836

Shuras/Jirgas Reflect Local Norms [1 to 5 scale]

3.096065

0.022472

3.051927

3.140202



South Central

0.175911

0.016802

0.142911

0.208912

South Western

0.092143

0.01257

0.067454

0.116833

Take Dispute to Court

0.488444

0.024814

0.43961

0.537277

Take Dispute to Shura

0.511556

0.024814

0.462723

0.56039

Trust People

0.41343

0.012126

0.389612

0.437248

Victim of Violence

0.171243



0.007817

0.15589

0.186597

N

5209

PSUs

572

Table 7: Asia Foundation (2005) Summary Statistics



Land Disputesland dispute all s

Land Dispute Resolved

Land Dispute Officially Recorded

Model 1

Model 2

Model 3

Model 4

Model 4

Model6

Shura in Village

-0.497*

0.853*

-0.297

[0.203]

[0.394]

[0.367]

Shura Member



0.384*

0.24

0.345

[0.172]

[0.417]

[0.393]

CDC in Village

0.036

0.767*

-0.205

[0.183]

[0.371]

[0.397]



CDC Member

0.052

-0.488

1.153*

[0.230]

[0.585]

[0.468]

Altitude (in meters)

-0.000**

-0.000**

0

0

0

0

[0.000]

[0.000]

[0.000]

[0.000]

[0.000]



[0.000]

No People in Village

0.000*

0.000+

0

0

0

0

[0.000]

[0.000]

[0.000]

[0.000]

[0.000]

[0.000]

Annual Income (ln)

-0.041

-0.067

0.036

-0.006

0.403*

0.394*

[0.121]

[0.117]

[0.149]

[0.134]



[0.162]

[0.172]

Read Letter

-0.191

-0.218

-0.357

-0.406

0.017

0.005

[0.138]

[0.137]

[0.370]

[0.397]

[0.331]

[0.340]

# People in HH

0.009

0.008

-0.012

-0.019

0.052

0.062

[0.021]

[0.021]

[0.049]



[0.049]

[0.043]

[0.042]

Deed

-0.244

-0.213

1.018**

0.990**

1.387**

1.487**

[0.159]

[0.158]

[0.327]

[0.322]

[0.356]

[0.360]

HH owns agricultural land

-0.138

-0.146+

-0.378

-0.453

-0.304+

-0.286+

[0.088]

[0.087]



[0.263]

[0.297]

[0.168]

[0.170]

HH owns livestock

0.171

0.167

0.037

0.063

-0.944**

-0.949**

[0.165]

[0.164]

[0.364]

[0.390]

[0.351]

[0.361]

Inherited Land

-0.324

-0.312

[0.218]



[0.214]

Years in Village

-0.007+

-0.007+

[0.004]

[0.004]

Central/Kabul

1.227**

1.232**

-1.704

-1.412



[0.465]

[0.471]

[1.181]

[1.230]

Eastern

0.971*

1.132*

-1.685+

-1.919*

[0.451]

[0.470]

[0.860]

[0.896]

South Central

2.141**

2.301**

-1.259+

-1.089



[0.388]

[0.415]

[0.707]

[0.685]

South Western

2.534**

2.698**

-1.358+

-1.328+

[0.453]

[0.470]

[0.728]

[0.715]

Northern

2.212**

2.288**

-1.720**

-1.792**



[0.347]

[0.360]

[0.581]

[0.579]

Central/Hazarajat

1.927**

1.941**

-0.504

-0.156

[0.414]

[0.417]

[0.829]

[0.872]

Longitude



0.039

0.029

[0.072]

[0.074]

Distance of market by foot in Summer

0.1

0.114

[0.096]

[0.096]

Constant

-3.952**

-3.485**

0.253



0.008

-8.602+

-8.094

[1.279]

[1.243]

[1.802]

[1.633]

[4.909]

[5.050]

Observations

10332

10332

235

235

359

359

prob >F

0

0

0.079

0.027

0.001

0.001

PSUs

1944

1944



191

191

269

269

Heteroskedasticty robust standard errors that correct for correlation oferror terms across within communities in brackets

+ significant at 10%; * significant at 5%; ** significant at 1%

Logit Estimates, Estimation accounts for survey design including householdweights and population sampling units

Table 8: Estimation Results, Land Disputes, NRVA Data (2005)



Community Dispute

Community Dispute

Resolved

Individual had Formal Dispute

Satisfaction with Resolution of FormalDispute

Model 7

Model 8

Model 9

Model 10

Model 11

Model 12

Shuras/Jirga Accessible

0.03

0.043

[0.077]

[0.077]



CDC in Community

0.817**

0.525**

[0.116]

[0.118]

Approach Shura Elder

0.617**

[0.194]



Approach Malik/Khan

-0.047

[0.258]

Approach Woluswali

0.155

[0.203]



Approach CDC

0.207

[0.417]

Approach Member of Parliament

-1.150*

[0.460]



Approach Government Agent

-0.433

[0.504]

Approach Foreign Forces

-0.277

[0.840]



Approach Police

0.459+

[0.236]

Courts Accessible

-0.066



[0.079]

Took Case to Court

-0.799**

[0.221]

Took Case to Shura

0.799**



[0.221]

CDC Satisfaction

-0.190+

[0.097]

Courts Follow Local Norms

0.093



[0.087]

Shuras/Jirgas Follow Local Norms

-0.244*

[0.095]

# People in HH

0.016

-0.01

0.019

0.043+

0.003



0.003

[0.011]

[0.025]

[0.012]

[0.024]

[0.035]

[0.035]

Income

-0.031

0.144*

-0.025

-0.072

0.082

0.082

[0.045]

[0.067]

[0.042]

[0.061]

[0.097]

[0.097]

Education

0.066**

0.083*

0.032

0.069*



-0.036

-0.036

[0.025]

[0.042]

[0.026]

[0.035]

[0.057]

[0.057]

Female

-0.157

-0.228

-0.658**

-0.574**

0.093

0.093

[0.139]

[0.217]

[0.138]

[0.186]

[0.238]

[0.238]

Age

0.001

0.001

0.004



0.001

0.008

0.008

[0.003]

[0.006]

[0.003]

[0.005]

[0.008]

[0.008]

Central/Kabul

-0.38

0.867*

-0.425

-0.105

0.472

0.472

[0.258]

[0.408]

[0.269]

[0.343]

[0.530]

[0.530]

Eastern

0.058

1.955**



0.675*

0.861*

0.511

0.511

[0.255]

[0.424]

[0.275]

[0.367]

[0.419]

[0.419]

South Central

0.278

1.374**

0.409+

0.289

-0.419

-0.419

[0.243]

[0.344]

[0.239]

[0.299]

[0.406]

[0.406]

South Western

-0.144



1.331**

-0.312

0.148

-0.362

-0.362

[0.313]

[0.403]

[0.322]

[0.456]

[0.536]

[0.536]

Northern

-0.644**

0.978**

-0.182

-0.059

0.017

0.017

[0.212]

[0.320]

[0.213]

[0.264]

[0.415]

[0.415]

Central/Hazarajat



-1.684**

2.012**

-0.750+

-0.309

-0.437

-0.437

[0.342]

[0.628]

[0.399]

[0.499]

[0.642]

[0.642]

Trust People

-0.237*

0.439**

-0.01

0.189

[0.103]

[0.168]

[0.109]

[0.146]



Listen to Radio

-0.011

-0.243

-0.200+

0.05

[0.123]

[0.201]

[0.121]

[0.185]

Constant

-1.771**

-1.847**

-1.705**

-0.64

0.236

1.035+

[0.400]

[0.509]

[0.482]

[0.602]

[0.610]



[0.602]

Obervations

4446

822

4478

1573

563

563

prob >F

0

0

0

0

0.033

0.033

PSUs

561

315

563

404

261

261


+ significant at 10%; * significant at 5%; ** significant at 1%

Logit Estimation, Estimation accounts for survey design and includesprovincial weights and population sampling units (PSUs)



Table 9: Estimation Results, General Disputes, Asia Foundation Survey ofthe Afghan People (2007)



Fear for Personal Safety or Security

Victim of Violent Crime in

the Past Year

Was Violent Crime Reported to LocalAuthorities

Model 13

Model 14

Model 15

Model 16

Model 17

Shuras/Jirgas Fair/Trusted

-0.207*

-0.240*

[0.101]

[0.100]

CDC Satisfaction

-0.004

-0.001



[0.090]

[0.087]

Shuras/Jirgas Accessible

-0.116+

0.210*

[0.063]

[0.104]

CDCs Accessible

0.583**

0.149



[0.099]

[0.175]

Courts Accessible

0.136

[0.106]

Confidence in Army

-0.029

0.256

[0.225]



[0.315]

Confidence in Police

-0.209

0.353

[0.148]

[0.252]

Confidence in Local Militias

0.209

-0.376+

[0.162]

[0.215]

Confidence in Political Parties



0.225

[0.209]

Confidence in Gov. Justice

0.495*

[0.206]

Confidence in Public Admin.



0.195

[0.211]

Confidence in Municipality

-0.448*

[0.222]

Confidence in CDC

-0.132



[0.219]

Confidence in Provincial Coun.

0.375

[0.249]

Confidence in Shura/Jirga

0.259



[0.231]

# People in HH

0.009

0.005

-0.005

0.02

0.022

[0.018]

[0.019]

[0.011]

[0.028]

[0.030]

Income

-0.098+

-0.071

0.063+

-0.221**

-0.249**

[0.053]

[0.054]

[0.035]

[0.063]

[0.069]

Education



0.01

0.008

0.070**

0.081+

0.079+

[0.025]

[0.026]

[0.023]

[0.042]

[0.047]

Female

0.162

0.171

-0.075

-0.349+

-0.432*

[0.166]

[0.169]

[0.111]

[0.204]

[0.219]

Age

-0.009*

-0.007*

0.008*



-0.003

-0.002

[0.004]

[0.004]

[0.003]

[0.007]

[0.008]

Central/Kabul

-1.630**

-1.755**

-0.732**

-0.41

-0.07

[0.335]

[0.344]

[0.237]

[0.457]

[0.504]

Eastern

-0.465

-0.492+

0.421*

-0.594

-0.447



[0.285]

[0.292]

[0.204]

[0.373]

[0.382]

South Central

-0.01

-0.046

0.390*

-0.382

-0.001

[0.301]

[0.307]

[0.193]

[0.359]

[0.392]

South Western

1.373**

1.170**

0.24

-0.211

-0.104

[0.398]

[0.397]

[0.257]



[0.499]

[0.496]

Northern

-1.341**

-1.399**

-0.09

-0.744*

-0.773*

[0.199]

[0.196]

[0.173]

[0.323]

[0.371]

Central/Hazarajat

-1.989**

-1.784**

-1.380*

-2.447*

-1.921*

[0.429]

[0.416]

[0.556]

[0.957]

[0.928]

Listen to Radio



-0.532**

-0.486**

-0.210*

0.068

0.012

[0.137]

[0.137]

[0.104]

[0.184]

[0.188]

Victim of Violence

0.537**

0.561**

[0.131]

[0.134]

Trust People

-0.292*

-0.272*



[0.120]

[0.120]

Constant

-1.839**

0.483

0.693

[0.319]

[0.637]

[0.656]

Cut 1

-3.135**

-3.284**



[0.494]

[0.521]

Cut 2

-2.271**

-2.418**

[0.499]

[0.528]

Cut 3

0.017

-0.117

[0.484]

[0.516]



Observations

1609

1558

4625

789

738

prob >F

0

0

0

0

0

PSUs

402

399

566

346

335

Ordered Logit Estimates

Logit Estimates


+ significant at 10%; * significant at 5%; ** significant at 1%Estimates Account for provincial sampling weights as well as populationsampling units



Table 10: Estimation Results, Local Safety and Security Issues, AsiaFoundation Survey of the Afghan People (2007)



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