AFGHANISTAN: 'We need a stable democracy that will never again
victimize the Afghan people'
Karin Palmquist
04/15/2004
It is the war the world forgot. After months in
the headlines, Afghanistan was pushed from the front pages and
prime network time by another war, that in Iraq.
At the donor's conference in Berlin on March 31
- April 1 of this year, 60 delegations - including all EU, G8
and NATO states - pledged a little under $4.5 billion to Afghanistan
for this fiscal year. A total of $8 billion was pledged over
the next three years. Generous as these pledges are, they are
a fraction of what Afghanistan needs. Afghanistan had asked
for $28 billion over the next seven years.
The country has the opportunity, and the will,
to once and for all pull itself out of extremism and rid its
economy of drugs. When DiplomaticTraffic.com met Afghanistan's
ambassador to the United States, Said Tayeb Jawad, his message
was two-fold: look at how far we have come, and look how easily
we could slip backwards if we lose the world's support.
"We've come a long way in two short years,"
Ambassador Said Tayeb Jawad said. "We started out from
zero. There is a roadmap for Afghanistan, for building national
institutions, for elections and so on. So far, everything is
in line and on time. We just adopted a new constitution on January
4, which is one of the most enlightened constitutions in the
region, giving 25 percent of the seats in parliament to women.
About 5.4 million children are now back in school, 35 percent
of which are girls. There are now 370 periodicals published
monthly in Afghanistan. A large part of those periodicals are
published by women for women. The women in Afghanistan are the
most liberal, because they know [if the Taliban were to return]
they would be the first victims. The next major step for us
is to prepare for the upcoming elections."
Afghanistan's top electoral official announced
on July 9 that the presidential election will be held on October
9. The parliamentary election scheduled to be held at the same
time as the presidential election was put off until April or
May of next year.
Orchestrating an election -- the first direct
election in the country's history - in a place where all infrastructure
was virtually wiped out is a huge task, but the ambassador says,
"The process is going well. We are registering 200,000
new voters per day. Out of eight million eligible voters, 5.8
million Afghanis have registered to vote; 38.2 percent of those
registered to vote are women. This is a tremendous achievement."
The share of females amongst candidates running
for office is between 12 and 15 percent. One of the presidential
candidates is a woman.
Perhaps even more daunting was the task of introducing
a new currency.
"It was one of the major accomplishments
of the Afghan government," the ambassador said. "We
replaced the old currency with a new national currency. For
US$1 you got 58,000 of the old currency. Now the exchange rate
is 50 Afghanis to US$1 and we have managed to keep inflation
under control. Seventeen trillion of the old currency was collected
over a period of three months, without one single security incident."
This is remarkable indeed, given the country's
lacking road system. The money was transported from remote parts
of the country by helicopter, sometimes even on donkey back.
Those are the achievements. Then there is the
question of how the country will be able to continue to make
progress.
"There is a consensus in the international
community for helping Afghanistan. The support is strong for
Afghanistan in the United States and Europe. The division comes
when you talk about how much and how fast," the ambassador
said.
At the NATO summit in Istanbul in June, France
angered some of its NATO allies by putting in a veto against
further NATO deployment in Afghanistan.
"A total of 29 countries are helping in Afghanistan
through the Operation Enduring Freedom and through International
Security Assistance Force [ISAF], which is in charge of the
peacekeeping in Afghanistan. We believe an additional 3,500
NATO soldiers would be sufficient, provided they were deployed
fast. It is very crucial to have these soldiers on the ground
in Afghanistan.
"The Taliban is an organized terror organization.
They have been defeated, but we still face challenges posed
by the Taliban and other terrorist organizations. In addition
to the threat posed to Afghan society, increasingly we also
face challenges that are the result of the trafficking of narcotics.
Criminals benefit from the lawlessness and are trying to undermine
the stability in Afghanistan. Some warlords and local strongmen
who see the establishment of the rule of law in Afghanistan
as a threat are trying to cause problems for the Security Council.
"More and more [these groups] are coming
into the mainstream. President Karzai's goal is to provide a
chance for every Afghan to participate in the new Afghanistan,
which is about peace and reconciliation. The president has chosen
a conciliatory approach," the ambassador said.
Afghan president Hamid Karzai is sometimes said
to lack support outside the capital of Kabul. The ambassador
said the government's ability to deliver services to all parts
of the country is limited, which undoubtedly leaves some regions
feeling sidelined, but he remains confident President Karzai
will win the presidential election.
"The process of building national institutions
such as a national police force and a national army takes time.
We can only stand on our own two feet if we build up our national
institutions. This is why we have asked the international community
to help us develop our army. Security services now provided
by the international community could be provided by the Afghans
themselves, at a much lower price. At present we have an army
of 10,000 men. We need to bring that number up to 60,000,"
the ambassador said.
Further, "the police and the judiciary system
need to be reformed. We need to build a civil system. We need
to improve logistics. We're lacking in human capital."
"Our biggest hope is the international community,"
the ambassador said. "We are grateful for the assistance,
but it does not match the president's and the people's needs
and wants. The aid we have received we have consumed.
"Afghanistan is the main front in the war
against terrorism. The world has left the job half-done. After
the war with the Soviet Union, the world was guilty of leaving
Afghanistan [to its fate.] We understand that there are crisis
in other parts of the world, and that resources are limited
and quickly absorbed. But the fact that we are on the right
track, that we seem to be doing well, is working against us.
The danger of crisis in Afghanistan is imminent.
"We need to make sure the drug economy does
not take over the legal economy. The threat of narcotics is
a common one. There is a clear connection between drugs, terror
and lawlessness. It is a global menace that needs a global solution."
"Terrorism is a new phenomenon to Afghanistan,"
the ambassador continued. "The Afghanis were never extremists.
The Taliban were overthrown by only 400 American Special Forces.
The Taliban are alien to Afghan culture. That's why they were
defeated so fast."
"We need to create a stable democracy
that will never again victimize the Afghan people," the
ambassador concluded.
