| Funeral in Berlin |
5 April 2003
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Afghan Donors Offer Too Little Too Late
If the occupation of Iraq is going badly, the occupation of Afghanistan is a Potemkin village of reconstruction. With the government of President Hamid Karzai postponing elections for three months owing to security concerns, it is clear that the foreign troops propping up his government have done little to pacify the local warlords. With his
government asking for $28.7 billion over seven years to rebuild a country that has spent a quarter of a century at war with itself, the $4.2 billion offered for next year and $8.7 billion over the next three years is just not enough.
If the reconstruction of Iraq is a political matter, the fixing up of Afghanistan is not. There is not a single interest group in the world, apart from drug-dealers and the local warlords who support them (and vice versa), for whom a strong and functioning Afghanistan is a bad thing. Many estimates say $2.5 billion of the GDP of the country will come from the cultivation of opium, of which Afghanistan grows 75% of the global supply. To its credit, the Bush administration will put up $123 million to deal with the poppies of Afghanistan. Moreover, Mr. Powell said at the Berlin Donors' Conference, “If we do not take aggressive action today to end the scourge of drugs in Afghanistan tomorrow, may be too late. The United States is prepared to supply forces for these operations until Afghanistan is able to provide for its own security.”
Putting troops and money into the situation will help, but the Afghan situation would definitely be better in hand if those troops and that money had turned up a year ago. Instead, 130,000 American soldiers, airmen and marines are in Iraq, and the US is spending 4 times as much per Iraqi as it is spending for every Afghan -- the populations are similar.
NATO is helping with 17 of the 26 members sending military support. Yet clearly that is not enough, or Mr. Powell wouldn't have had to remark, “There is no place in the new Afghanistan for private armies or sectarian violence.” The very existence of these private armies proves that NATO has not gained control of the country and that Mr. Karzai's writ extends to the suburbs of Kabul and no further.
The world cannot afford to let Afghanistan revert to the warring cantons it once was; the Taliban proved that. Yet the commitment of the west seems to be lacking, having sent too few troops and too little money. There is a useful measurement of the success or lack thereof, thanks to the drug dealers. When the price of heroin Rome, London and New York drops, that will mean Mr. Karzai is losing.
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