July 2002
Back from the Abyss: Prospects for the Future

On July 24, Afghanistan's minister for foreign affairs, Abdullah Abdullah, spoke on the results of June's Loya Jirga (Grand Council) elections and internal security concerns. He made a desperate plea for the West to deliver the promised support for Afghan reconstruction. Abdullah stressed that missing the opportunity to invest in Afghanistan and establish a functioning democratic state would be a loss for all mankind. The following is a summary of the event.

Afghanistan has suffered from twenty-three years of constant combat. The Soviet occupation devastated the Afghan economy, created 5 million refugees, and disabled more than a million people. This laid the foundation for the emergence of terrorist networks under the Taliban and al Qaeda's reign of terror in the 1990s. An armed resistance movement led by General Ahmad Shah Massoud, among others, continued to fight the Taliban and al Qaeda; this struggle prevented the Muslim fundamentalist regime from gaining control of the entirety of Afghanistan and destabilizing neighboring Central Asian republics. Abdullah expressed firm conviction that without this internal Afghan resistance, the later victory over the Taliban and al Qaeda would have been nearly impossible.

Abdullah emphasized that the tragic events of September 11 focused the United States and its allies on real threats and presented an opportunity to free Afghanistan from terrorist rule. Since the overthrow of the Taliban regime and the signing of the UN Agreement on Provisional Arrangements in Bonn last year, Afghanistan has begun the process of democratization. President Hamid Karzai was elected by a great majority of Loya Jirga's representatives. One of Karzai's opponents--who received a fair number of votes--was a woman. Such elections would have been unthinkable several months before. The foreign minister claimed that a legitimate interim administration was now functioning and that the international support pledged to rebuild Afghanistan is crucial to the reform process. Thus far, assistance has mainly been designated for humanitarian purposes, but funding for reconstruction is equally important in order to create a state that does not need to rely on humanitarian aid.

The absence of investments and the lack of significant labor-intensive projects could lead the Afghan people to become disillusioned with the new government and its policies. The monumental tasks facing the new government include feeding and housing 1 million refugees, building schools for 2 million students, establishing a police force and a national army, instituting a judiciary, and putting a halt to drug trafficking. These are all vital steps of the reconstruction effort. In a country where security forces are neither housed nor paid and where roughly 700,000 people are armed, internal security must be a primary concern.

Abdullah was disappointed with the Western media's portrayal of events in Afghanistan, such as the recent assassination of Vice President Abdul Qadir, as arising solely from ethnic tension. The assassins could have been members of one of the drug cartels that Abdul Qadir was trying to remove or part of another criminal organization.

Discussion

In the discussion Abdullah mentioned that $4.8 billion of foreign aid was promised to his country over a period of the three to four years. Afghanistan is supposed to obtain $1.8 billion this year. So far $616 million in humanitarian aid (paid mostly through international and nongovernment organizations) has been received, but only $40 million was earmarked for reconstruction. The United States (which is helping to train the army) and Germany (which is helping to create an Afghan police force) are leading the reconstruction efforts. China has also responded to Afghanistan's most urgent needs. In a response to a question on Afghanistan's political system, the foreign minister replied that a constitutional committee is about to start drafting a new constitution. This constitution would have to be approved by an extraordinary Loya Jirga in about one and a half years' time. The interim government's term in office ends in two years.

Addressing the accidental U.S. attack on civilians on July 1, the minister replied that the families of those who were killed must be granted financial support and that the attack should be analyzed in order to prevent future mistakes. He said that the mandate of the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) should now be expanded to cover more of Afghanistan's provinces. When the ISAF mandate runs out in 2004, he hopes that Afghanistan will have its own security forces to rely upon, proving an extension of the ISAF's mandate unnecessary.