Development Under Fire: The Uneven Impact of Aid on Violence in Afghanistan

In a seminal contribution to the literature on conflict and development, researchers from the World Bank, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), and Universitat Pompeu Fabra have produced a compelling and timely study titled “Can Development Programs Counter Insurgencies? Evidence from a Field Experiment in Afghanistan.” Published in the American Economic Journal: Applied Economics (2025), the paper evaluates Afghanistan’s National Solidarity Programme (NSP) through a rigorous randomized controlled trial spanning 500 villages across ten Afghan districts. Led by Andrew Beath, Fotini Christia, and Ruben Enikolopov, the study reveals nuanced evidence on how local context significantly influences the impact of development efforts on insurgent activity.

Building the State from the Ground Up

Launched in 2003, the NSP was Afghanistan’s largest and most ambitious rural development initiative, channeling over $2 billion into village-level infrastructure and governance projects. It aimed not only to improve local welfare but also to build legitimacy for the national government during the ongoing war with the Taliban. The program operated by establishing gender-balanced Community Development Councils (CDCs) in each village through secret ballot elections. These CDCs then identified and managed small-scale projects, such as irrigation systems, road repairs, electricity generation, and water supply upgrades, financed by block grants averaging $33,000 per village. While a coalition of NGOs implemented the program, its funding was publicly attributed to the Afghan government, reinforcing its role as a provider of public goods and services.

To evaluate the NSP’s counterinsurgency potential, the researchers employed a cluster-randomized experimental design. Half of the 500 study villages were randomly assigned to receive NSP between 2007 and 2011, while the remaining half served as a control group, receiving the program only after the study concluded. Researchers gathered data through three waves of household surveys, complemented by detailed security incident records from NATO’s CIDNE database, to measure changes in economic outcomes, governance perceptions, and levels of violence.

Winning Hearts and Minds, Sometimes

The results present a mixed, though illuminating, picture. In eight of the ten districts studied, located in central, northern, and western Afghanistan, NSP implementation significantly reduced insurgent violence. Treated villages in these areas reported improved access to public goods, higher household incomes, and more favorable attitudes toward government officials, NGOs, and even foreign troops. Villagers perceived an improved security situation, and migration rates into these areas increased, signaling stronger public confidence in local governance and stability. These effects align neatly with the “hearts and minds” theory central to modern counterinsurgency strategy, in which better services and responsive governance help win over the civilian population and starve insurgents of local support.

However, the study found little evidence that NSP increased intelligence-sharing or disrupted insurgent operations through greater surveillance or tip-offs. The reduced violence did not stem from more insurgents being captured or attacked but from fewer villagers choosing to join or support the insurgency. Thus, the NSP’s impact appeared to work primarily by raising the opportunity cost of rebellion, making development a disincentive to participation in conflict.

When Aid Becomes a Target

In sharp contrast, the two eastern districts of Hisarak and Sherzad, both located in Nangarhar province along the border with Pakistan, told a very different story. Here, the same development program not only failed to improve perceptions of government but actually provoked an increase in violence. Despite economic improvements, treated villages became more likely to suffer insurgent attacks than their control-group counterparts. These districts were heavily infiltrated by nonlocal insurgents, particularly fighters from the Haqqani network, who were less dependent on local communities for support and more inclined to use terror and coercion as tools of control.

For these groups, development projects represented visible symbols of government presence, and therefore prime targets. The proximity to the porous Pakistan border offered these fighters sanctuaries to regroup, resupply, and mount attacks with near impunity. The NSP’s presence in such an environment did not deter insurgency; it invited retaliation. Indeed, the closer a village was to the border, the more likely it was to be attacked. Rather than building legitimacy, development in this context exposed communities to greater insecurity.

Development Is Not One-Size-Fits-All

The researchers emphasize that the mixed results were not due to flaws in program implementation, ethnic composition, or baseline levels of violence. Rather, the key variable was the structure of the insurgency. In areas where insurgents were locally embedded, development worked. In areas dominated by externally supported fighters, development failed or backfired. This finding has profound implications. It suggests that policymakers cannot rely on development as a universal antidote to conflict. The local nature of insurgent operations, how insurgents interact with and rely on the population, must be factored into intervention design.

The study also serves as a critique of international state-building approaches in Afghanistan and similar contexts. A uniform rollout of development programs across diverse conflict zones without tailoring to insurgent typologies or geographic realities may not just be wasteful; it can be dangerous.

A Cautionary Legacy

The study stands out not only for its methodological rigor, including replication of earlier findings, extensive robustness checks, and detailed attrition analysis, but also for its timeliness and relevance. As Afghanistan continues to grapple with instability and the legacy of international intervention, the authors’ findings offer hard-earned lessons. Development programs can indeed help suppress insurgency, but only when aligned with the local political and security landscape. When misapplied, such programs can make communities more vulnerable, not less. In the end, the study is a sobering reminder that development in conflict zones is never neutral. It is a strategic act, and one that must be executed with clear-eyed understanding of the terrain, both physical and political.