"I don't want to pull the bow too far. Above all, women have received a degree of freedom unthinkable under the Taliban. They are allowed schooling and no longer legally bound by state law to wear the veil. But this improvement must not be exaggerated. Life remains particularly harsh for women. In many provinces the old dress code is enforced, women are subjected to violence, and in some areas mistreatment of Afghan and foreign women working in various assistance programs has been so widespread and brutal that a number of humanitarian agencies have closed their operations, and more are expected to do so.
Politically, life is less oppressive than under the Taliban. The loya jirga is a phenomenon that could not have occurred during Taliban rule. But it is essential to note that the government is extremely fragile, even in Kabul, and with little power beyond the capitol. The regime is actually dominated by powerful warlords, and President Hamid Karzai so isolated and fearful for his life that he has appealed to and received a substantial contingent of American Special Forces to replace unreliable Afghan bodyguards. (These Special Forces bodyguards are to be replaced by other American security guards wearing less conspicuous uniforms.)"
So it is better? The one surefire way to promote development is the liberation of women.
>From today:
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/11/12/international/asia/12AFGH.html
RECONSTRUCTION U.S. Shifts Emphasis in Afghanistan to Security and Road Building By JAMES DAO
WASHINGTON, Nov. 11 — The Pentagon has decided to send 170 more civilian affairs soldiers to Afghanistan, doubling the current number. This reflects a shift toward improving security in important cities and rebuilding the war-battered infrastructure, over searching for remnants of Al Qaeda and the Taliban.
The Pentagon is also considering using the Army Corps of Engineers to manage road and bridge projects in northern Afghanistan, where the administration hopes to increase trade with Afghanistan's neighbors.
The shift toward security, made at the urging of President Hamid Karzai, will send the soldiers — many with experience in the Balkans and Haiti — to major population centers like Mazar-i-Sharif, Herat, Kandahar and Bamian, officials said.
The military has been involved in small-scale reconstruction projects for the past year through the Army Special Forces units known as civil affairs teams. They have helped rebuild scores of schools, irrigation systems and health clinics in nearly a dozen provinces.
The civil affairs soldiers, along with troops from other countries, will bolster security in regional centers that will provide bases for American diplomats and aid workers to fan out into rural areas. Those workers have been largely confined to Kabul, the capital, because of unrest in the countryside, administration officials said.
The expanded presence of American diplomatic-military teams will, the administration hopes, accelerate larger-scale reconstruction projects and help discourage factional violence.
"The issue before us is: Are we ready for the next phase?" Gen. Richard B. Myers, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told an audience at the Brookings Institution in Washington on Nov. 4. That means, he said, "flipping our priorities and making the next phase primarily the reconstruction piece."
"It is time to shift the emphasis there, at least for three-quarters of the country," General Myers added.
Administration officials say there are no immediate plans to reduce the number of American troops now in Afghanistan, currently at 7,000. Many are involved in searching for Taliban and Qaeda fighters and weapons caches in southern and eastern Afghanistan, though they have found few guerrillas in recent months.
"If you want to be in a position to pull your troops out, you have to leave behind a stable environment," said Dov S. Zakheim, the under secretary of defense, who has been put in charge of the military's reconstruction programs in Afghanistan. "So reconstruction and security go hand in hand."
Still, American officials say, the border areas remain volatile and the Pentagon expects to keep some troops in Afghanistan for several years. "I would not predict when we're going to be either out of there militarily or in some other form of help, because it's going to take quite some time," General Myers said.
The Pentagon plans to integrate soldiers from the new Afghan Army, which is being trained by American Special Forces, into border patrols next year, American officials said. Afghan soldiers may also be asked to provide security for road construction crews.
If successful, using Afghan soldiers would allow the Pentagon to withdraw some conventional and Special Forces units, which could be sent to Iraq or elsewhere in the campaign against terrorism.
Republican and Democratic lawmakers, relief organizations and some senior Afghan officials have criticized the Bush administration for not moving swiftly enough to rebuild Afghanistan. Many critics say the Pentagon's new plans fall well short of a pledge by President Bush last spring to work "in the best traditions of George Marshall," President Truman's secretary of state after World War II, who developed the plan for rebuilding Europe.
"Rather than getting out there in a leadership role and saying, `We need a Marshall plan,' and fighting for it, they've taken a minimalist approach," said Joel Charny, vice president for policy with Refugees International.
The major problem remains money, relief officials contend. While civil affairs units can provide quick assistance to war-ravaged communities, their work typically involves projects that cost less than $100,000.
But funds for larger projects have been slower to flow. Earlier this year, the White House rejected Congressional efforts to increase emergency aid to Afghanistan by nearly $200 million. Congress has also yet to enact spending bills for fiscal year 2003, which began Oct. 1, that would allocate as much as $300 million for Afghan aid programs.
Administration officials counter that the United States has already allocated $455 million for Afghan aid this year.
Afghan officials also want the United States to help expand the Kabul-based peacekeepers, the International Security Assistance Force, to other cities. But Pentagon officials say the United States and its allies cannot spare additional troops.
"I think the physical expansion of ISAF is a dead letter because nobody wants to do it," said Joseph J. Collins, the deputy assistant secretary of defense for stability operations. "But there are a great many things going on to increase security. Regional centers, built around civil affairs teams, are important in terms of a presence, in terms of liaison, in terms of helping to spark reconstruction activities."
Partly in response to complaints by President Karzai about the slow flow of aid, the Defense and State Departments recently assigned senior officials to raise money from wealthy nations for reconstruction, including training, equipping and housing the Afghan Army.
Mr. Zakheim is the Pentagon's fund-raiser, while the State Department last month dispatched a seasoned diplomat, William Taylor, to Kabul to coordinate its reconstruction efforts. The two men returned last week from a tour of the Persian Gulf that resulted in several new pledges, Mr. Zakheim said.
In September the Pentagon also sent Maj. Gen. Karl W. Eikenberry to oversee training of the Afghan Army. American officials are hoping that having the two-star Army general in that position will strengthen fund-raising efforts and build respect for the new force among Afghanistan's warlords.
Andrew S. Natsios, the administrator of the United States Agency for International Development, said large-scale projects are getting under way; he cited recent pledges by the United States, Japan and Persian Gulf nations to finance major road projects connecting Kabul to Kandahar and Herat, and Kandahar to the Pakistan border. Work on a 35-mile stretch of the Kabul-Kandahar road has just begun, he said.
"The road is a symbol" of a new phase in the revival of Afghanistan, Mr. Natsios said in an interview. "We're getting into much larger and visible projects."
The emphasis on reconstruction would appear to be a major shift for the Pentagon. During the 2000 campaign, President Bush derided the use of military forces for "nation building" and Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld remains uncomfortable with long-term reconstruction and peacekeeping missions involving American troops.
But Pentagon officials said the goal was to get American troops out of Afghanistan faster, not keep them there longer.
"I keep telling our guys there will be a time, a year or two from now, when we need to get out of this business," said Mr. Collins, of the Defense Department. "Reconstruction will be in high gear, the need for immediate short-term humanitarian assistance will have passed and our civil affairs guys will then need to go on to different functions and leave these things" to A.I.D.