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Donor delay spells doom for
Afghanistan
By Jim Lobe
WASHINGTON - By completing just 1 percent of the
reconstruction required in Afghanistan to date, the
United States and other donors are risking renewed
conflict, if not disintegration, in the devastated
country, says an unusually frank report released this
week by the US relief organization CARE.
The
eight-page policy brief, co-authored by the Center on
International Cooperation (CIC), finds that
Afghanistan's stability and reconstruction are
increasingly threatened by violence, especially that
directed against aid workers; the rise of a
"neo-Taliban" movement, particularly in Pashtun parts of
the country; and narco-trafficking by regional warlords
and others.
And it argues that donors have
failed to follow through on earlier promises of
desperately needed reconstruction assistance. Moreover,
what aid is being provided is becoming increasingly
expensive because of the insecurity that is growing
outside the capital Kabul, the only part of the country
that is patrolled by the NATO-led International Security
Assistance Force (ISAF).
"Putting Afghanistan on
the road to peace needs more than good intentions; it
needs urgent action," says Atlanta-based CARE, which
stressed that projects worth just US$192 million were
completed in the 18 months after US-led forces ousted
the Taliban regime.
That constitutes "roughly 1
percent of Afghanistan's reconstruction needs",
according to the report.
CARE's brief coincided
with the publication of a second report by the Afghan
Independent Human Rights Commission (AIHRC) on Tuesday,
which confirmed that human-rights abuses, including
summary executions, arbitrary detentions, and the use of
unofficial prisons by warlords, are also on the rise
throughout the country.
"There is no rule of
law, [and] the police that are responsible for the rule
are themselves violators and are acting against the
law," said Nadir Nadiri, an AIHRC spokesperson.
She said that people countrywide were being held
unofficially in prisons by local warlords or authorities
because of conflicting land claims and forced evictions.
Those detained, she said, often "don't have money to pay
or don't have any influence with the authorities".
The reports come amid new concerns about the
situation in Afghanistan, even as Iraq has claimed the
media spotlight for most of the past six months.
Washington has been particularly concerned about the
resurgence of the Taliban along the border with Pakistan
and in the Pashtun areas.
While US and allied
forces have largely succeeded in turning back
ever-bigger offensives by the Taliban and other Islamist
groups along the border, security in much of the largely
Pashtun areas in the southern and eastern parts of the
country has deteriorated sharply in recent months.
In addition, the central government headed by
interim Chairman Hamid Kharzai has not yet succeeded in
extending its authority over key regional leaders and
warlords who control most of the countryside, while
renewed cultivation of opium poppies is contributing to
their ability to resist demands from Kabul.
Each
of these developments poses "serious threats" to the
country's security, but together, according to CARE,
they make for a far more dangerous situation and one
that threatens the delivery of desperately needed aid,
as well as hope for reconstruction.
"Many areas
of the country are now off-limits to the aid community,"
said CARE, while one-half of Afghanistan's 32 provinces
are deemed "high-risk" areas for aid work. In the worst
incident to date, four workers for a Danish relief
agency were executed and a fifth badly wounded by
suspected Taliban rebels in southern Afghanistan last
week.
As a result, reconstruction work cannot
proceed over large areas of the country, with
potentially disastrous political consequences.
"The longer Afghans are made to wait for
concrete signs of greater progress, the easier it will
be for extremists to exploit their resentment and for
criminals to profit from the institutional vacuum that
results," said Kevin Henry, CARE USA's advocacy
director.
The deterioration in security is
illustrated by the rising number of armed attacks
against civilians outside of Kabul. During the summer of
2002, the report says, the ratio of armed attacks
outside Kabul to inside the city was approximately 2:1;
this past summer the ratio rose to 7:1, CARE said.
That was due primarily to the failure of ISAF to
extend its presence beyond Kabul, the agency added.
While the recent request by Germany and Washington to
North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) members to
contribute to such an expansion constituted a "positive
step", it said, "it is time to move from good intentions
to action".
"NATO must urgently expand
peacekeepers outside the capital before the security
situation gets any worse," said Paul Barker, CARE's
country director for Afghanistan.
More
peacekeepers would also help deal with rising opium
production, which is fueling the power of warlords and
pro-Taliban forces, as well as drug-traffickers
themselves, at the expense of the Karzai government.
Afghanistan's share of global opium production
skyrocketed from 12 percent at the time of the Taliban's
ouster to 76 percent in 2002, according to the United
Nations.
Above all, donors must not only follow
through on their promises last year to provide $4.5
billion in reconstruction funding over five years, they
should add substantially to that total. CARE insisted
that a far more realistic estimate - particularly given
the extra costs caused by continued insecurity - would
be $20 billion over the next four years.
The
report noted that the populations of Iraq and
Afghanistan are roughly equal, while needs are greater
and natural resources fewer in Afghanistan. Yet the
administration of US President George W Bush recently
committed an additional $20 billion for Iraq for this
year, while Afghanistan is to receive only $800 million.
"The longer the international community waits to
take action, the higher the price will be," the relief
group warned.
(Inter Press Service)
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