DONORS PLEDGE REBUILDING HELP AS AFGHANS BACK U.N. PLAN.
International donors and development experts yesterday pledged to help Afghanistan rebuild its shattered economy, amid calls for a cancellation of the country's debt and the creation of an international trust fund to channel donor funds, Agence France-Presse reports. The pledges came at a three-day conference [in Islamabad] aimed at taking the first steps to getting Afghanistan back on its feet after two decades of Russian occupation, factional wars and the US-led drive on terrorism.
Dow Jones reports that the World Bank said in Islamabad yesterday that donor agencies were in the process of creating a trust fund for the reconstruction of Afghanistan-a task that preliminary estimates say could cost anywhere between $6 billion to $20 billion over five years. Mieko Nishimuzhu, World Bank vice-president for South Asia, said that, whatever the figure, "it's not going to be small."
The World Bank's agency for reconstruction and development will likely work with a future Afghan government to select projects and priorities for the trust fund, Nishimuzhu said. The aim was to help Afghanistan become economically productive and to get Afghans to take part in the rebuilding process, she noted. "The idea is getting Afghans to own the reconstruction process," she said.
AFP notes that William Byrd, World Bank acting country manager for Afghanistan, told the conference that aid management and funding of post-crisis Afghanistan could, depending on how it is managed, either become part of the solution for Afghanistan or part of the problem. He suggested that an umbrella trust fund be set up through which the international community could channel its assistance, rather than allowing donor money spilling into a myriad specific reconstruction programs and activities.
OXFAM, speaking on the fringes of the conference, called on the international community to cancel Afghanistan's foreign debt, notes AFP. "Wiping out Afghanistan's debt would be a gesture of goodwill from the international community and a sign of commitment to the development of Afghanistan. It would be a success for the conference," Oxfam representative Siddo Deva said.
Representatives of Afghan NGOs, meanwhile, insisted their involvement in rebuilding Afghanistan is vital to ensure long-term peace in the country. "Afghan NGOs have kept on traveling to Afghanistan, they were on the ground when the international community had left the country," said Abdul Salam Rahimy of Civil Humanitarian Assistance. "Afghan NGOs have the capacities and the experience required to rebuild the country. We intend to empower people to give them the means to rebuild their lives themselves."
The Islambad meeting coincides with UN-sponsored talks in Bonn involving leaders of Afghanistan's complex patchwork of ethnic, military and political groups on the establishment of a transitional government. Reporting on that meeting, the Wall Street Journal Europe (p.1) says representatives from Afghanistan's four main political groups, under pressure to seize an opportunity for peace, yesterday backed a UN proposal to create a transitional government and multi-ethnic Parliament out of the chaos of war. Signaling their intention to overcome decades of ethnic division, the Afghans also embraced naming former King Mohammed Zahir Shah head of the national assembly.
Lingering ethnic rivalries could come into play today, however, as the 28 delegates begin to discuss in detail the makeup of an interim cabinet and supreme council, which will serve as a transitional Parliament, the story says. The exact composition of an interim administration that will serve as a cabinet of ministers-agreed in principle in Bonn-will also have to be worked out in the following days.
Diplomats spoke optimistically of the conference lasting three to five days, or slightly longer, with the hope that an interim executive emerges that could quickly go to work in Kabul, the Afghan capital , reports the New York Times (B5). But with many factional leaders still in Afghanistan, having sent deputies and relatives instead, another conference, in Kabul itself, might be needed, they said.
The world is prepared to provide billions of dollars to help rebuild Afghanistan after years of isolation, some $70 million from Germany alone, said Joschka Fischer, German foreign minister. But this readiness is linked with clear expectations, he said, urging the delegates "to forge a truly historic compromise that holds out a better future for your torn country and its people."
In a separate report, AFP notes that UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan will visit Washington today for talks on the humanitarian crisis in Afghanistan and on the AIDS pandemic with US President George W. Bush. Annan's spokesman, Fred Eckhard, said talks would also focus on the UN conference on financing for development, to be held in Monterrey, Mexico, in March.
Annan will confer with Bush and his top advisers in the morning and with US Secretary of State Colin Powell in the afternoon, and then meet separately with World Bank President James Wolfensohn and with IMF Managing Director Horst Köhler to discuss reconstruction in Afghanistan, Eckhard said. Also reporting, Reuters says the World Bank and the IMF are expected to play important roles in Afghan reconstruction.
The first formal steps toward the reconstruction of Afghanistan took place last week, when representatives of two dozen nations and international agencies met in Washington to begin planning how it might be done, and who will pay for it, writes the Washington Post (A23). Another World Bank/Asian Development Bank meeting opened yesterday in Pakistan to identify specific needs, and an Afghan fundraising conference is planned for late January in Japan. American, Japanese and United Nations officials spoke last week of an intensive undertaking that could cost donor nations $ 10 billion. They said the effort would bring immediate, small-scale projects to Afghan communities while planning major road, dam and gas pipeline projects for years to come. But the risks are high.
"There is a lot more interest in rebuilding Afghanistan than we have seen for 10 years," said Knut Ostby, the U.N. Development Program's representative to Afghanistan, who is organizing this week's meeting in Pakistan writes. "If security is established and donors are good to their words, Afghanistan will get a lot of long-term help this time."
The U.S. Agency for International Development, which will spearhead American efforts to rebuild the country, is developing a reconstruction plan that emphasizes agriculture, schools and roads. Noting that 80 percent of the Afghan economy is based on farming, USAID Administrator Andrew S. Natsios said last week that much of the aid should be in that sector.
While the needs in Afghanistan are enormous, officials said, the nation's ability to absorb reconstruction help is limited. The United Nations' Malloch Brown said Afghanistan can reasonably use no more than $ 1 billion a year for the first two years, when most projects will be relatively limited community recovery efforts.
Larger, expensive national building projects would follow with World Bank and Asian Development Bank financing, but only if donors were still interested in funding them. To make sure the largest potential donors are involved, the European Union and Saudi Arabia last week joined the United States and Japan on a steering committee to guide international decision-making.
In related news, BBC Online reports that the foreign ministers of the Gulf states have been meeting in Oman to discuss the situation in Afghanistan and theMiddle East.
Meanwhile, David Rieff writes in the Wall Street Journal (A18) that the sad truth is that while Colin Powell is right to say that the U.S. and its allies have an enormous obligation "not to leave the Afghan people in the lurch," that is just what they are doing by pretending the Afghans will choose democracy if afforded some diplomatic help and a lot of money for rebuilding, yet politically left to their own devices. To the contrary, left to their own devices these Afghan leaders will simply take up where they left off before the Taliban overthrew them.
Indeed, the only regime that would at least offer a possibility that the future of Afghanistan would be better than its hideous recent past would be an international protectorate in which the warlords had little or no say. For the process of democratization is going to take decades, and, politically incorrect though it may be to insist that this is a job only the West can do, it cannot be entrusted to people who wouldn't know a human right if they tripped over it. No amount of U.N. window-dressing, high-flown rhetoric, and humanitarian aid, can change this fact.