Columbia International Affairs Online: Working Papers

CIAO DATE: 01/2015

The Civil Transition in Afghanistan: The Metrics of Crisis?

Anthony H. Cordesman

December 2014

Center for Strategic and International Studies

Abstract

The Burke Chair at CSIS is issuing a new report entitled The Civil Transition in Afghanistan: The Metrics of Crisis? This report focuses on the near term problems that Afghanistan faces in terms of governance, corruption, funding its budget, economic growth and development, and coping with a return to something approaching a narco-economy. The report presents a wide range of metrics to help illustrate and bond Afghanistan’s problems. Unlike many reports on aid, it does not make assumptions about the longer term or focus on what might happen in five to 10 years if Afghanistan took decisive action to change the way in which its government functions or could ignore its internal divisions and an ongoing war.