On Tue, Mar 30, 2004 at 09:04:06AM -0500, John D. Giorgis wrote: > led a spectacularly successful War in Afghanistan
"spectacularly successful"? It's not over yet by a longshot, much too soon to call it a success. At best, it is a work in progress. *** http://makeashorterlink.com/?T641253E7 Afghan challenge Financial Times; Mar 30, 2004 Just over two years after the fall of the Taliban, a United Nations report warns that Afghanistan is again in danger of relapsing into a failed state - only this time fired by a well-fuelled drugs economy. The Taliban is regrouping and al-Qaeda is still present inside the country and the tribal areas along the border with Pakistan. Fortunately, there is an opportunity to discuss all this at this week's international donors' conference in Berlin. This may be the last opportunity to set Afghanistan on a path towards stability and modest but self-sustaining prosperity - provided everyone realises what is at stake. The UN Development Programme report, drawn up for the Berlin meeting, makes revealing comparisons with other post-conflict countries to show that Iraq gets about 10 times as much aid as Afghanistan despite having roughly the same population size, while Bosnia and East Timor get nearly four times more aid per capita. Yet it was Afghanistan, reduced to a shell by the war against the Soviet occupation in the 1980s and the chronic civil conflict that followed in the 1990s, that served as the safe haven for the Islamist hyper-terrorism of Osama bin Laden. Have we learnt nothing? There are achievements to point to. Since the fall of the Taliban and the Bonn conference two years ago, for example, literally millions of Afghan refugees have returned. Two Loya Jirgas have managed to elect a president and ratify a constitution. Against that, however, the writ of President Hamid Karzai barely extends beyond Kabul. The power of the warlords and militia leaders the US overly relied on remains entrenched - and financed by an opium trade that has spread from 14 to 28 provinces in the past two years, generating about $2bn (£1.1bn) or half the country's gross domestic product. The easily accomplished defeat of the Taliban was only the beginning of the job. What is needed now is a development agenda, a big investment in nation-building. If Afghanistan were an ordinary development problem, it would be a massive task, rivalling the challenge of the poorest parts of sub-Saharan Africa. The UNDP's call for a carefully structured seven-year programme, with commitments of $27.6bn, is of a scale with the challenge. Patient institution-building (including through elections now postponed until September), the replacement of drugs by sustainable economic activity and the restoration of security through disarming the private armies and creating a national army will take at least that amount of time and money. The portents for this week's conference are not too bad. George W. Bush is looking for a foreign policy success to crown his re-election campaign and, at the moment, Afghanistan looks more plausible than Iraq. He should get strong allied support if he uses this occasion to create a new impetus behind reform - fundamental change that eventually replaces the rule of the gun with the rule of law. _______________________________________________ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
