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By Mohammad Naser Timory
CIPS Working Paper, January 2025
At a glance…
- Following the Fall of Kabul in August 2021, there have been a lot of political, economic, social and military changes in Afghanistan. This paper looks into the changes that were introduced by the de facto administration in Afghanistan in the municipalities between August 2021 and July 2022.
- In order to map the changes, this paper looks at the four largest municipalities in Afghanistan (Kabul, Herat, Kandahar, and Mazar-e Sharif) which cover more than 65% of the country’s urban population.
- One of the limitations of this paper is that there have not been any publicly available research reports on municipal governance under the DFA and there are hardly any critical reports on municipal governance by the media outlets inside and outside the country. Due to the restrictions, this paper was unable to conduct minimum verification tools on the information such as revenues released by the DFA.
- Municipal administrations in Afghanistan play key roles in the urban centers. They regulate a range of issues in the market including the price of basic goods, as well as conducting the operation and maintenance of public infrastructure such as roads, canals, parks, etc.
- In order to map the changes, this paper looked at five thematic areas of municipal governance in Afghanistan, namely, a) leadership and personnel, b) development projects, c) revenues, d) service delivery, and e) public participation and accountability mechanisms.
Mohammad Naser Timory is an independent research consultant. Previously, he worked with Integrity Watch Afghanistan as a researcher and later as head of policy advocacy from January 2015 to June 2022. He conducted several research reports for Integrity Watch Afghanistan including National Integrity System Assessment (2015), Community Score Card of Kabul Municipality (2016), Fighting Corruption in Afghanistan: Solving the Institutional Puzzle (2016), and Game of Numbers: Analyst of Afghan National Budget (2017). As head of policy advocacy, he championed the cause of anti-corruption in Afghanistan by presenting research findings to the public through media, participating in high-level government platforms including National Procurement Commission headed by the President of Afghanistan and working with communities to advocate for the rights of victims of corruption. He was previously an Adjunct Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Herat University and a lecturer of political science at a private college. Mr. Timory has a bachelor’s degree in Philosophy from Fergusson College (Pune) and completed his Master’s in International Relations from South Asian University (New Delhi).