London meeting to consider 5-year plan to rebuild country Peace, prosperity elusive four years after Taliban's overthrow
By Sandro Contenta
LONDON—Afghanistan will push for greater control of its future at an international conference to help it fight poverty, insurgents and Afghans drugs.
The conference opens in London today as 2,000 Canadian soldiers head for a NATO mission in southern Afghanistan, where Taliban and Al Qaeda insurgents are being financed by the massive trafficking of opium poppies.
Officials from 70 countries will consider adopting the "Afghanistan Compact," a five-year plan to improve the country's security, governance and economy. The final draft of the document acknowledges "Afghanistan's transition to peace and stability is not yet assured."
Said a recent UN report: "Afghanistan democracy may never come of age if violence remains the tool in dispute resolution, if resource allocation depends on corrupt officials, and if half of the national income is generated by illicit activities."
A top priority for President Hamid Karzai is to secure an extra $4 billion for reconstruction, and to convince foreign donors to channel aid to the Afghan government rather than non-governmental organizations.
Since December 2001, when a U.S.-led coalition toppled the Taliban regime, the international community has pledged $13.5 billion (U.S.) to rebuild Afghanistan. But 80 per cent of the money has gone to non-governmental organizations, said Ravan Farhadi, Afghanistan's ambassador to the United Nations.
"The NGOs are not accountable, they do not report to the Afghan government. And therefore, they are a kind of state within a state," Farhadi said in a telephone interview.
With NGOs focusing on local, small-scale projects, Afghanistan still finds itself without crucial major infrastructure, he said. "What Afghanistan needs is the construction of main roads and factories — all was destroyed and nothing has been rebuilt. No major project of reconstruction has been implemented in Afghanistan."
Successful presidential and parliamentary elections have made foreign donors generally supportive of giving the government more direct aid. But corruption is still a serious concern.
Afghanistan is one of the poorest countries in the world. Malnutrition is widespread, and one of every five children do not live to see their fifth birthday. Half of all school-age children don't attend school and only 18 per cent of women are literate — the lowest level in the world.
Malaria, tuberculosis, drug addiction and HIV/AIDS are spreading rapidly. Average life expectancy is 44 years, and in the northern Badakhshan province, one-third of women die from complications during pregnancy or childbirth.
"Support for basic services at the community level is vital because people will otherwise lose hope," said Anne Randall Johnson, Kabul-based director of Afghanaid, an NGO that provides assistance in 700 communities.
Targets set by the Compact include linking 40 per cent of villages with roads, boosting the Afghan army to 70,000 soldiers and getting electricity to 65 per cent of urban homes and 25 per cent of rural ones.
Karzai and British Prime Minister Tony Blair will jointly host the two-day conference. Canada will be represented by deputy foreign affairs minister Peter Harder. Foreign affairs officials flatly refused requests for interviews to explain Canada's position at the conference.
No matter what the conference decides, NATO and U.S. soldiers will be stationed in Afghanistan for years to come, said Mike Williams, of the London-based think tank, the Royal United Services Institute for Defence.
A key to development is extending the Afghan government's authority to the largely lawless southern part of the country around Kandahar, where Canadian troops are arriving to lead a NATO security and reconstruction mission.
Canada's top diplomat in the south, Glyn Berry, was killed Jan. 15 when a suicide bomber rammed his convoy on the outskirts of Kandahar. Three Canadian soldiers were severely injured in the attack.
Taliban and Al Qaeda insurgents have recently adopted the suicide bomb tactics widely used by groups fighting U.S. forces in Iraq. Suicide bombers in Afghanistan have struck 13 times in the last 11 weeks.
"All the terrorist acts in Afghanistan are exported from Pakistan," insisted Farhadi, who urged Western governments to pressure Pakistan to crack down. "In Afghanistan, the Taliban have no supporters."
Still, by the Afghan government's own count, more than 1,800 armed groups operate within Afghanistan. Other militias disarmed as a precondition for taking part in last September's parliamentary elections.
But the U.S.-led coalition angered warlords who gave up their guns by selectively rearming some groups in the south to help fight the Taliban, said Christopher Langton, chief defence analyst for the London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies.
The Compact also calls for the eradication of the illegal opium trade in Afghanistan, which produces 87 per cent of world supply and cultivated 104,000 hectares of opium poppies last year.
"The biggest consumer markets are London and Amsterdam," said Farhadi. "It's also a great failure of the donor countries for not preventing consumption in the West. But nobody talks about that."
