Afghanistan Peace CampaignAfghanistan Analysts Network
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Since the crash following the collapse of the Republic in August 2021, Afghanistan’s economy has witnessed a modest recovery, although many households have not. In a new longitudinal study, AAN has followed a number of families across Afghanistan and over time, to better understand how the country’s economic trajectory has played out for individual households. When we first spoke to our interviewees in late 2021, all of them, including those who had previously been wealthy, were struggling and living off the dwindling resources they still had or the credit they managed to secure. A few weeks later, in early 2022, some were already doing a little better, but it was difficult to predict what their individual trajectories would be. This year, Martine van Bijlert and the AAN Team decided to revisit the original interviewees – the ones who could still be reached – to see how they had fared.
The picture that emerged from four rounds of interviews is one of starkly diverging paths. Households that had been better placed before the economic crisis hit – with multiple assets, solid employment and strong networks of trust – were much more likely to recover. Those with less valuable assets, weaker networks and, most importantly, a narrower range of resources, often saw their situation degrade, simply because it did not improve. For them, the economic decline has tended to be cumulative and self-reinforcing, often trapping the individuals and their families in a cycle of debt, forcing them to defer necessary maintenance or sell off belongings they would need in the future. It became increasingly difficult for them to plan, save and invest and, as a result, many of them saw their chances of economic recovery dwindle.
At the heart of the economic survival of all households were countless small and large acts of informal support that each had experienced over the years. Although these acts were often insufficient to turn their situation around, they were crucial in preventing the decline from accelerating further. This informal welfare system is vital, but also dangerously strained and often comes at a considerable cost to all involved.
Afghanistan’s economy has, over the years, witnessed a modest recovery, even though many households have not. This is also borne out in the current study. The households in our sample would, ‘in normal times’, have been considered middle or lower-middle class, with enough income to cover not only their basic needs, but also savings, repairs and investments. A few had been notably wealthy. Most of them owned or co-owned a house and many a piece of land and most were, or aspired for their family to be, part of the educated class. They were the people who could, normally, be expected to both benefit from and undergird a country’s economic growth. Instead, many have depended for their survival on their informal networks of support, which have been crucial, but drawing on them has come at a high cost. Taken together, these accounts show the limitations of both Afghanistan’s modest economic growth, and of what pure macroeconomic data can tell us.
Edited by Roxanna Shapour and Kate Clark
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Authors:
Martine van Bijlert
AAN Team