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© USIP 2012 • All rights reserved.

“No other conflictaffected country has been 

as “meeting-ized” as 

Afghanistan. . . . If high-profile 

meetings and high-quality 

documents alone could solve 

a country’s problems, the 

effort in Afghanistan already 

would have succeeded. . .”

June 29, 2012

Avoiding Meeting Fatigue

How to make the numerous international meetings 

on Afghanistan more effective

Summary

•	 The numerous high-profile international meetings on Afghanistan since 2001 have helped

keep attention focused on Afghanistan, elicit financialsupport, give a“seat at the table”

to all partners, generate good strategic documents, and provide a forum for the Afghan

government.

•	 However, the meetings often have raised excessive expectations; lacked meaningful followup; undermined their own objectives; prioritized diplomacy oversubstance; focused more

on donors’issuesthan Afghan problems; oriented the Afghan government toward donors;

diverted resourcestoward meetings; resulted in meeting fatigue; and sometimesseemingly

substituted for action.

•	 These meetings can be made more effective by: (1) keeping to realistic expectations; (2) not

expecting meetingsto substitute for difficult decisions and actions; (3) having substantive,

disciplined agendas and avoiding co-optation by diplomatic priorities; (4) matching objectives

with the issue(s) the meeting issupposed to address; (5) ensuring quality background work;

(6) focusing follow-up on key areas and a few simple, monitorable benchmarks; and (7) keeping the number and frequency of meetings manageable.

A Plethora of Meetings 

Since the downfall of the Taliban regime in late 2001, Afghanistan has been subjected to a plethora

of high-profile international meetings—at a minimum every two years, more often every year, and

sometimesjust months apart. With the Chicago NATO Summit on Afghanistan’ssecurity in May,

the“Heart of Asia”Ministerial Conference in Kabul in June, the Tokyo conference on development

in July, and the possibility of follow-up meetings already being discussed, it might be useful to step

back and review this experience. What hasthe sheer number of these meetings meant? What have

they accomplished? In what ways have they fallen short? Have there been negative side effects?

And how do such eventsrelate to the ongoing transition as well as beyond 2014?

Some of the more high-profile meetings on Afghanistan include:

•	 Bonn Conference (Bonn Agreement concluded in December 2001) and related events;

•	 Tokyo Conference on Reconstruction Assistance to Afghanistan (January 2002);

•	 Geneva Meeting on Afghan Security Sector (May 2002);

•	 Berlin Conference (April 2004);

William Byrd

E-mail: wbyrd@usip.org

PEACEBRIEF130
© USIP 2012 • All rights reserved.

Avoiding Meeting Fatigue

page 2 • PB 130 • June 29, 2012

•	 London Meeting (February 2006);

•	 Paris Conference (June 2008);

•	 Kabul Conference (July 2010);

•	 Lisbon NATO Summit (November 2010);

•	 Bonn International Conference (December 2011);

•	 Chicago NATO Summit (May 2012);

•	 Tokyo Cooperation Conference (July 2012).

There have also been almost countless other lower profile butsignificant events, ranging from

meetings on key sectors(e.g. justice, private sector) to policy-oriented intellectual interactions(e.g.

a number of Wilton Park conferences), meetingsin foreign capitals of the Joint Coordination and

Monitoring Board for Afghanistan (an Afghan government ministerial/donor ambassador-level

forum which normally meetsin Kabul), numerousregional cooperation conferences, and many

others. Itseemsthat no other conflict-affected country has been as“meeting-ized”as Afghanistan.

Accomplishments

Taken as a whole, these meetings have been successful in some respects:

Keeping international attention focused on Afghanistan (especially important in the earlier 

years). While the number of high-profile meetingsin part reflected the importance of Afghanistan,

they have also contributed to keeping the country in the international eye. Lessimportant during

the recent“surge”years, thisrole of high-profile meetings may again become more significant with

the risk of Afghanistan falling out of the spotlight in coming years.

Perhaps (particularly in the earlier years) eliciting more financial resources for Afghanistan. Over

the past decade Afghanistan has not exhibited the usual tendency in post-conflictsituationsfor attention and aid to decline precipitously after a few years of engagement. However, the role of highprofile meetingsin thisregard should not be overstated, compared with Afghanistan’s geopolitical

importance, the expanding insurgency and deteriorating security trendsin the latter part of the

decade which elicited more troops and aid in response, and probably most important the presence

of large numbers of international troops which has been accompanied by high aid levels.

Demonstrating the inclusive, multinational nature of the international intervention in 

Afghanistan and providing a “place at the table” for all partners. Although the USA all along has

been the dominant troop provider and largestsingle aid donor, the intervention in Afghanistan

wasfrom the beginning internationalized (U.N. Security Council mandate, NATO engagement),

which was concretely demonstrated by the high-profile meetings. Having a“seat at the table”may

have encouraged smaller countriesto participate and contribute to a greater extent than would

otherwise have been the case.

Serving as the vehicle for production of good documents on Afghanistan. Several meetings had

associated high-quality and influentialstrategic documents and related analytical work—including, among others,“Securing Afghanistan’s Future”(2004) and“Afghanistan in Transition: Looking

Beyond 2014”(2011). Indeed, if high-profile meetings and high-quality documents alone could

solve a country’s problems, the effort in Afghanistan already would have succeeded. . .

Providing a forum for the Afghan government to present its strategy and concerns. Notable examplesinclude the Berlin conference of 2004 (at which“Securing Afghanistan’s Future”comprised

the government’s presentation) and the Paris conference of 2008 (where the“Afghanistan National

Development Strategy”wasformally presented).
© USIP 2012 • All rights reserved.

Avoiding Meeting Fatigue

page 3 • PB 130 • June 29, 2012

Shortcomings and Adverse Side Effects

Set against these positives are a number ofshortcomings and adverse side effects:

Raising unrealistically high expectations. Afghans were exposed to high aid pledges announced

at meetings, while foreign partners were given the impression that Afghanistan could rapidly

modernize and reform. Such expectations were unrealistic on both sides and inevitably were

disappointed. Moreover, donors often inflated their pledges by recycling past pledges, resulting in

double-counting of pledges across different meetings. This provided positive headlines, but when

Afghansread about billions of dollars pledged and then saw little change in their own lives, they

assumed the money had been diverted by corrupt international and national actors.

Lack of meaningful follow-up on agreements reached and commitments made at meetings. 

For example, the Afghanistan Compact of 2006, with its very large number of highly ambitious

benchmarks, became virtually meaningless within about a year. More often than not, follow-up

to meetings was overtaken by events and lost in the run-up to subsequent meetings—the sheer

number ofsuch events detracting from the follow-up for each individual meeting. The large and

growing amounts of funding for Afghanistan also hindered follow-up to hold the Afghan government accountable for its commitments.

Not achieving meetings’ own objectives, sometimes even setting them up to fail. For instance,

one of the objectives of the development-oriented meetings wasto mobilize aid for Afghanistan.

Yet too often this aspect has been deliberately downplayed (most recently in the case of the

upcoming Tokyo conference), with meetings explicitly billed as not being“pledging conferences”

to avoid embarrassment to some donors or hosts, undermining resource mobilization.

Diplomacy often tending to trump substance. While diplomacy was necessary for organizing

meetings, much effort went into ensuring a good diplomatic outcome of meetings, particularly

for the host country. No meeting—no matter how far it fellshort of its objectives—was openly

acknowledged to be a failure or even an incomplete success. Perhapsthisreflected in part the

fragility of the international coalition supporting Afghanistan and the need for positive diplomacy

to help maintain troop levelsfrom countries where public opinion was notsympathetic to such

deployments. But the relentless onslaught of good newsfrom conference communiqués damaged

the credibility of the meetings, as well as obscuring theirsubstantive achievements.

Meetings often focused on donors’ needs and issues rather than addressing Afghanistan’s problems. This detracted from substantive problem-solving. Moreover, the large number of participants

with their own favorite causes made it that much more difficult to establish priorities. A quintessential example of the damage caused by catering to donors’rather than Afghanistan’s needs wasthe

May 2002 Geneva meeting, at which“lead donor”responsibilitiesfor different parts of the Afghan

security sector were allocated by the international community among several donor countries.

These assignmentsreflected political and diplomatic priorities among donorsincluding the desire

ofsome of them for visibility, rather than Afghanistan’srequirements. For the most part, the division

of labor (USA responsible for the Afghan army, Germany for the police, Italy for the justice system,

Japan for disarmament, demobilization, and reintegration, and the UK for counternarcotics) had

little if any alignment with differing comparative advantages and resources of the designated lead

donors. The resulting balkanization of the security sector and of internationalsupport for it had

harmful consequences which were felt for a number of years, and delayed and distorted critical

aspects ofsecurity sector reform such as development of the justice sector and police.

Orienting the Afghan government toward donors rather than the Afghan population. Highly

aid dependent countrieslike Afghanistan face the problem of“dual accountability”—i.e., accountability to their external financiers detracting from domestic financial and political accountability,
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Avoiding Meeting Fatigue

page 4 • PB 130 • June 29, 2012

About This Brief

William Byrd is a development 

economist and has worked on 

Afghanistan in various capacities 

over the past decade. During 

2002–2006, he was stationed in 

Kabul, Afghanistan, where he 

served as the World Bank’s country 

manager for Afghanistan and 

then as economic adviser. He is 

currently a visiting senior expert 

at the U.S. Institute of Peace. He 

participated in and was involved 

in the preparations for many of 

the high-profile international 

meetings on Afghanistan over the 

past 10-plus years. This paper is 

based on his experience with such 

meetings and reflects his concerns 

about their shortcomings and the 

excessive expectations typically 

associated with them.

and the meetings may have exacerbated this problem by forcing the government to face the

international community so frequently. However, asindicated earlier the lack of follow-up meant

there was not meaningful accountability to the donor community either,so both domestic and

international accountability were diffused and undermined.

Diversion of resources (especially intellectual resources) toward meetings rather than substance.

While the fundsrequired were not negligible, including for transporting large delegations around

the world and accommodating them at high-cost locations, the human and intellectual resources

loom large in the meetings’costs. Much intellectual, organizational, and logistical effort went into

these meetings, and the opportunity cost of these resources may have been very high. 

Meeting fatigue—too many meetings detracting from the significance of each individual event. 

This has been especially true in recent years when the number of high-profile meetings multiplied.

Meetings often seemingly substituting for action. The focus on meetings and on achieving

positive outcomesfor the meetingsthemselves may well have distracted from the hard work

of making difficult decisions and implementing them. Nor could the meetings and documents

presented at them do more than paper over the lack of a coherent overallstrategy interlinking security, political, economic, and governance dimensions. Unfortunately, it appearsthat high-profile

meetings often were at least implicitly seen as a top priority in their own right, and seemingly

became almost a substitute for action. Indeed, asthe situation deteriorated in the second half of

the last decade, at timesitseemed asif the main response of the international community (prior to

the 2009 surge) wasto hold more meetings.

Lessons for the Future

Despite all these problems, not having high-profile international meetings on Afghanistan is

not an option and most likely will not be an option in the future—pressuresfor holding them

are enormous, and any reduction in their number most likely would have been possible only at

the margins. Moreover, with declining international attention and resourcesfor Afghanistan, the

benefits of meetingsin keeping Afghanistan on international policy agendas may again come to

the fore.

So the best approach isto try to make meetings more effective. Declining international

resourcesfor Afghanistan in coming years may facilitate such efforts by making it easier to make

agreementsstick, provided that reductionsin assistance are pre-programmed and gradual.

Some suggestionsto increase the effectiveness of high-profile international meetings on

Afghanistan include the following:

•	 Keep to realistic expectations about what meetings should try to accomplish;

•	 Do not expect meetings to substitute for difficult decisions and hard actions;

•	 Have substantive meeting agendas, try to avoid complete co-optation by diplomatic priorities, and try to maintain discipline in shaping the agenda (avoid proliferation of pet causes);

•	 Match meeting objectives with the main issue(s) the meeting is supposed to address;

•	 Ensure quality background work for meetings based on realism, presented in digestible

form;

•	 Given the limitations to follow-up, focus on key areas and a few simple, monitorable

benchmarks;

•	 Keep the number and frequency of meetings manageable.