Monday, August 26, 2002

US policy in Afghanistan has become one of promoting 'nation-building'.

Paul Wolfowitz, the US deputy secretary of defence, one of the leading hawks in the Bush administration, told The Daily Telegraph: "I do think increasingly our focus is shifting to training the Afghan national army, supporting ISAF, supporting reconstruction efforts - those kind of things that contribute to long-term stability.

"My biggest single concern is that the economic aid that was promised at the Tokyo conference, which I think is crucial not just for economic purposes but for political and security purposes, is just not coming through at the levels that were pledged." The Tokyo conference in January pledged $4.5 billion (£3 billion) in international aid for the reconstruction of Afghanistan, of which donor nations promised to give $1.8 billion this year. "The statistic I recall is that barely 30 per cent of what was promised for this year has been delivered," Mr Wolfowitz said. "Clearly there are major aspects of this that have implications not only for the daily welfare of people, but also for the general security situation."

I think this is a good thing but, no matter how much money or peace-keepers flow into Afghanistan we have to accept that it will not become stable, peaceful or independent overnight. Stability and commerce and ideas will flow from the major cities, despite the occasional street violence. Once the cities have begun to rebuild, the warlords on the fringes that are still hoping to carve out their own niche will, hopefully, see that by cooperating with the central government, foreign businesses and peacekeepers prosperity can be thiers for a much lower cost than violence. Again, this will not happen overnight but we cannot despair at the occassional spasms of disrution that will come.

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