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Hamid? Hamid who?
By Jim Lobe
WASHINGTON - It must have been a frustrating
time for Afghanistan President Hamid Karzai, who on
Tuesday concluded 10 days of lobbying for more United
States attention and assistance before flying to New
Delhi.
One year ago, the dapper, green-caped
crusader for his country was the toast of Washington,
and US leaders and politicians were falling all over
themselves with assurances that, this time, the US would
not turn its back on Afghanistan as it did after the
Soviets quit the country in the late 1980s.
President George W Bush even proposed a Marshall
Plan for the war-devastated country to ensure that
Afghanistan would not only recover, but prosper as well.
But one year later, Karzai found US attention focused
firmly, grimly and virtually exclusively on Iraq. Worse,
despite passionate appeals for more financial support,
the Afghan leader had to settle for an increase in the
line of credit for Afghanistan extended by the
government's Overseas Private Investment Corporation,
from US$50 million to $100 million.
The perfect
guest, Karzai did not complain - even when the press
ignored him entirely during a brief, five-question
photo-op with Bush at the White House. And he was
suitably grateful for the larger line of credit, telling
a television interviewer that the $35 million pledged to
finance and insure a proposed five-star luxury hotel in
Kabul offered "a vote of confidence in the stability of
the government".
"We have received assurances
that the United States will continue to support
Afghanistan and that the attention there will be focused
and continuous, and that Iraq will not reduce attention
for Afghanistan or the amount of help given to
Afghanistan," Karzai insisted after a brief White House
visit with Bush last week.
But others outside
the administration who met the president indicated
considerable apprehension.
"As the eyes of the
world focus elsewhere," said World Bank president James
Wolfensohn, who met Karzai, "we should not forget that
the experience of Afghanistan is a proving ground for
whether the international community can stay the course
beside a fragile country as it builds itself up from the
aftermath of conflict".
The same message was
delivered by Democratic lawmakers at a hearing of the
Senate foreign relations committee at which Karzai
testified last week. "The facts make one thing clear,"
said the ranking committee Democrat, Joseph Biden.
"There is a great deal of work to do in Afghanistan and
an obligation to do so."
Biden has been one of
the most outspoken proponents of following through on
Bush's Marshall Plan for the country, as well as for
expanding the International Security Assistance Force
(ISAF) beyond the capital Kabul and into the countryside
to enhance the central government's authority. Indeed,
Karzai's visit comes amid mixed reports regarding both
the reconstruction and security situation in
Afghanistan, particularly outside Kabul to which ISAF so
far has been confined.
While some 2 million
Afghan refugees have returned from neighboring countries
since the Taliban's ouster in late 2001 - a statistic
touted by Pentagon chief Donald Rumsfeld during a
meeting with Karzai as proof that people are "voting
with their feet" - many are not receiving adequate
assistance, according to relief agencies.
Particularly worrisome is the security situation
in northern and southern parts of the country, which a
Kabul-based United Nations spokesman last week described
as precarious due to continuing fighting between rival
factions and, along the border with Pakistan, the
reemergence of Taliban forces now allied with those of
Pashtun nationalist and former US-backed mujahideen
leader, Gulbuddin Hekmatyar.
The concern is so
great that last month the German government, which with
the Netherlands is in charge of ISAF, warned in an
internal report that its troops might have to be
withdrawn if a US-led military invasion of Iraq sets off
coordinated attacks against Western forces in Kabul
itself.
In many parts of the country outside
Kabul, aid agencies have been forced to stop work due to
harassment, threats and even violence by tribal or
dissident forces. "There's a general destabilization,"
an official with Mercy Corps said on Monday. "It feels
like the period after the Russians left [in 1989]. A lot
of crime and civil unrest."
The Bush
administration, which originally opposed the expansion
of ISAF because of fears that the international force
would get in the way of the Pentagon's efforts to track
down surviving Taliban and al-Qaeda forces, has tried to
stabilize the countryside primarily by dispatching
Special Forces teams backed up by the threat of aerial
attacks to key warlords and regional leaders to persuade
them to cooperate more with central government officials
and policies.
But analysts say that the tactic
has so far been largely ineffective and, in some cases,
may have actually bolstered the power of local warlords
who have received guns and money from the US forces.
Washington has also focussed on building a
national army that can gradually extend the central
government's reach beyond the capital, but this too
appears to be making little progress. A recent report by
CARE International found that only 3,000 recruits had
been trained, of whom about one half have already
deserted due to ethnic conflict within the army, poor
pay and poor housing.
US women's and human
rights groups also express growing concern about a
general return, particularly in predominantly Pashtun
areas, of extremely conservative, Taliban-like
practices, including harassment and even beatings of
women and girls whose dress, escorts, transport and
other behavior is deemed un-Islamic by local
authorities.
"Women are facing harsh
restrictions from local leaders," said Senator Barbara
Boxer during last week's hearing. "That is why we need
an expansion of ISAF."
Karzai insisted that the
overall situation was not as dire as reports by US media
and relief groups depicted. "It is not like that," he
said. "The government has much more authority and charge
in the country than you can presume."
But at the
same time, he admitted that the government faced huge
challenges and needed much more support from the
international community. The US and other donor nations
pledged $4.5 billion in aid for Afghanistan over five
years at a conference in Tokyo in January last year, but
the money has been slow to arrive, adding to the
government's inability to assert its authority.
"Afghanistan is not yet out of the woods,"
Karzai said. "Don't forget us if Iraq happens."
(Inter Press Service)
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