Step inside the office of a provincial council in Afghanistan and you'll find a handful of councillors listening to the travails of their constituents. A school needs a roof, a village dispute needs to be settled, the head of a family has become too ill to work. Provincial councillors have little to work with beyond glasses of tea and their own wits. But they represent a rare seed of democracy in a barren state. They are hardly immune from corruption: Kandahar provincial council is not exactly a beacon of integrity. But they are often as close to the people as the state gets, for it has been Afghanistan's misfortune that rulers since the Iron Emir, Abdur Rahman, have tried to impose a highly centralised government, sharply against the grain of society. If we were good at state-building, we would champion provincial councils, not ignore them. The kiss of death would be for more donors to rush in, to teach them how to apply for their own funds. Provincial councils need the means to do their job: transport to get around the province and access to a little expertise, and the right to hold regular public hearings with the provincial governor. The intervention in Afghanistan unleashed a torrent of rhetoric about spreading democracy. The military surge, which Barack Obama announced last week he would wind down, was supposed to be accompanied by a civilian one. If British and American governments took their own words more sincerely, we would have more to show for 10 years of state-building.
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