Big Bucks, Tough Talk at Afghan Aid Meeting

Jan. 18, 2002 -- After two decades of civil war and many years of drought, the words often used to describe Afghanistan are daunting.

Shattered, war-ravaged, heavily armed and mined, drought-prone, wretched and anarchic are just some of the terms used to describe the Central Asian nation.

And almost a month after an interim administration under the leadership of Hamid Karzai took office in the capital of Kabul, no one is mincing words about the state of the Afghan economy.

During a visit to the Afghan capital of Kabul on Thursday, U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell called Afghanistan a "startup country" — a term experts understood to euphemistically mean it has to build itself from scratch.

In a recent report on the country's economy, the World Bank said Afghanistan "must now be considered the poorest, most miserable state in the world."

Estimates of the amount of money it would take to reconstruct the country vary, although they all run to billion dollar figures.

Afghanistan's interim administration has put the figure at $45 billion while the World Bank estimates it would take about $15-18 billion over the next decade to rebuild the nation.

But at immediate stake is a sum of about $5 billion to cover the first two years of Afghanistan's reconstruction projects. And it is with this goal in mind that representatives of about 60 countries are meeting in Tokyo From Jan. 21 to pledge aid to Afghanistan's interim government and set economic policy terms for the Karzai administration.

Big Bills, Big Donors, Big Mileage

The $5 billion figure was arrived at by the U.N. Development Program, the World Bank and the Asian Development Bank over the past few months. Their estimate for the next five years rests at $10.2 billion and Karzai hopes the international community represented at the Tokyo conference will be generous in their aid disbursements.

All eyes are on Japan, the United States, the European Union and Saudi Arabia, countries that are jointly hosting the conference and are widely expected to shoulder the bulk of the bill.

At a news conference in Tokyo today, Japan's Chief Cabinet Secretary Yusuo Fukuda said Japan would provide a total of $40.1 million to assist in Afghanistan's reconstruction efforts.

European Union officials have said they hoped to provide at least $500 million a year, and Powell has promised that on its part, the U.S. contribution would be "significant."

Lessons From History

From abject macro-economic poverty to promises of aid running into billion-dollar figures, Afghanistan seems to have come a long way, but the journey is rife with pitfalls, competing interests and strings with various attachments.

The international community has had lessons in the complications of pumping mega-bucks into shaky, war-torn regions after the Bosnian and Kosovo reconstruction projects and it's a situation the world wants to ensure will not be duplicated in Afghanistan.

At the end of the Bosnian War in 1995, international aid donors rushed in to aid in reconstruction efforts but more than a decade later, with rampant corruption in the Bosnian government and a lack of centralized and coordinated control, a U.N.-commissioned report called the situation there "a vast political laboratory on top of a mass grave."

To prevent the problems of Bosnia, the World Bank and other organizations are expected to push for the establishment of a trust fund to coordinate disbursements and avoid duplication.

Aid experts fear that the big donors will fund high visibility pet projects and will attempt to gain political mileage out of it.

And Afghans, who have watched their country turn into a political playing field for the superpowers during the Cold War, are particularly sensitive to foreign influences on their country.

The peculiarities of the Afghan situation, where a multitude of warlords continue to vie for power and shifts in allegiances are common, could make the disbursement of aid a tricky exercise.

Once again, history has not been kind on the Afghans on that front. During the Soviet occupation of 1979-1989, the CIA pumped in millions of dollars for the Afghan mujahideen via the Pakistani intelligence service, which placed its bets on Hekmatyar Gulbuddin, a conservative guerrilla leader credited with reducing the capital of Kabul to rubble.

Salaries and Security

Security is a top priority for the interim administration and Karzai has called for the formation of a united national army.

But given that some government employees have not been paid for months, the issue of salaries for servicemen and civil servants is a primary, immediate concern.

With a bare-boned manufacturing sector, the bulk of Afghan economic aid is likely to be funneled into the agricultural sector, where years of drought have reduced most farmers to abject poverty.

A priority for the international community is to ensure Afghanistan's desperate farmers do not take to the lucrative poppy cultivation, which once earned the country the dubious distinction of being the world's largest opium producer.

But amid the dire warnings, many note that there is immense hope for the reconstruction of Afghanistan and the signs of rejuvenation are abundant.

Educated exiled Afghans have begun trickling back home to pitch in for the reconstruction efforts and the hollow caves where two magnificent Buddha statues once stood before they were blown up by the Taliban is now the site of a thriving, impromptu bazaar.