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| April 1, 2004 |
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| Donors Pledge $8.2 Billion for Afghanistan |
BERLIN - April 1, 2004. Donors at an international conference pledged $4.4 billion over the next year to help rebuild Afghanistan and smooth its transition to post-Taliban
democracy, The Wall Street Journal Europe reports.
Afghan finance minister, Ashraf Ghani, said he is "delighted" with the
pledges, made after Afghan President Hamid Karzai appealed to officials
from more than 50 countries to help his war-ravaged country "stand on its
own strong feet" and confront the threat from private militias. For the
next three years, donors pledged $8.2 billion in total, Ghani said late
Wednesday.
US Secretary of State Colin Powell earlier in the day had offered $1
billion in aid on top of the $1.2 billion the US has pledged this year,
and promised "the United States will not abandon you." The European Union
said it would pledge $297.5 million in 2004 reconstruction and humanitarian aid. Chancellor Schroeder said Germany would give reconstruction aid of $390 million over the next four years. Japanese envoy Sadako Ogata offered $400 million over the next two years. Karzai came to Berlin with a plan seeking $28 billion in aid over the next seven years, and he asked potential donor countries to recommit themselves to "the vision of a stable, secure and prosperous Afghanistan" that could be self-sufficient within a decade.
The Press Trust of India Limited reports that a new report entitled
"Securing Afghanistan's Future", prepared by the Government of Afghanistan with support from the World Bank, the Asian Development Bank and UN
agencies, says that over the next seven years $27.5 billion will be needed
to take Afghanistan from its current dire levels of poverty, hunger and
want to an annual per capita GDP of about $500. Alastair McKechnie, World
Bank Country Director for Afghanistan, said, "The figure of $27.5 billion
may seem a lot but it will simply help Afghanistan get back on the track
from which its people were brutally wrenched in late seventies." He said
that the multi-billion dollar price tag for Afghanistan's stability and
future should be disaggregated to demonstrate what the figure would really
buy for a nation seeking to shed the violence of its past and to combat
the re-emerging drug economy. The price tags for health, education and
infrastructure had to be measured against the enormous needs for building
the skilled and healthy population.
Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (Germany) meanwhile writes that the $27.5 billion figure is, according to the World Bank, a small amount in
comparison to the costs of two decades on warfare in Afghanistan. The loss
of human lives, the loss of economic growth, humanitarian aid and military
intervention all amount to $240 billion according to the Bank. The
international finance institution said in the report that only nine
dollars per year for each Afghan would be enough to put basic health
infrastructure back on its feet. McKechnie said the Berlin conference
didn't have to decide about the whole amount in one session. Countries had
different possibilities, in terms of time and money, to provide the
funds-and the same applies to the World Bank, he said. The most important
thing for the Afghan government was a signal from the international
community that it is keeping course-whether this means tomorrow or in two
days.
Meanwhile, a draft of the conference communiqué, obtained by The Financial
Times, commits the international community to where possible making
"multi-year (funding) commitments" to be channeled increasingly through
the Afghan budget or through contributions to Afghan-run trust funds.
Officials close to the Afghan government said it was particularly
important that the US shift from single-year to the type of multi-year
pledges that Washington has agreed with several Middle Eastern countries,
in order to help plan reconstruction programs. The declaration represented
a diplomatic victory for the Afghan government, which has lobbied hard for
a longer-term financial commitment from donors.
The Associated Press notes that Australia has pledged a further A$25
million (US$19 million) for humanitarian aid and reconstruction in
Afghanistan, the foreign minister said Thursday. Alexander Downer said the
additional funding took Australia's total aid commitment to the
war-ravaged nation to A$110 million (US$83 million) since September 2001.
That makes Afghanistan Australia's third-largest humanitarian aid
recipient after East Timor and Iraq, Downer said.
CTK Daily News reports the Czech Republic is interested in joining
projects for the reconstruction of Afghanistan but it does not yet know
how much it will be able to invest in them, Czech Foreign Minister Cyril
Svoboda told journalists. The Czech Republic would like, for instance, to
participate in the construction and reconstruction of Afghan cement works
but the government should still discuss the volume of possible
investments. Czech companies are also negotiating supplies of trolley-
buses for the Afghan capital Kabul. Svoboda pointed out that the gift of
one trolley-bus to Afghanistan could be considered, to instigate its
interest in the purchase of further ones. The supplies would be paid
either from international or Afghan means.
The Washington Post meanwhile notes that UN officials struggled to reach a
goal of winning $80 million in commitments here to help procure equipment in time for presidential and parliamentary elections set for September. The United States offered about $20 million, and later increased its contribution by $5 million if more donations were made. The United Nations
ultimately decided to scale back its request to $65 million, and that
target was reached, a senior State Department official said.
In other news, Agence France Presse notes that Afghanistan and its six
closest neighbors inked a regional cooperation accord Thursday to step up
the fight against narcotics by creating a "security belt" around the
country. With the drugs trade crippling reconstruction efforts, the deal
is aimed at tightening border controls, tackling traffickers-including the
possibility of joint cross-border operations-and exchanging information.
[The accord] was formally signed by officials from Afghanistan and the six
bordering countries-China, Iran, Pakistan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and
Uzbekistan. Britain, which has taken the lead international role in
helping Afghanistan tackle the drugs problem, helped draw up the
agreement.
In an interview with Die Welt (Germany), the Afghan minister of the
economy Sayyed Mustafa Kazemi says corruption and drugs are Afghanistan's
biggest challenges. In order to overcome both, the country needs to
develop its economic power, for poverty is the mother of all of today's
problems in the country, he says. Kazemi further explains that business
laws have been liberalized, which means for the people of Afghanistan that
they enjoy a certain amount of legal protection-and this in turn puts an
end to the great confusion after the fall of the Taliban regime. He notes
that the government is currently working to reform the bureaucracy, and
together with German support, Afghanistan founded the Afghan Investment Support Agency-a service agency for potential investors. It now takes about half a day for an investor to get a license, he says.
Reuters report that Afghanistan has not done enough to improve women's
rights and must tackle gender inequality if the country is to develop, the United Nations said on Wednesday. A new report from the UNDP said that gender equality was critical to achieving development goals in
Afghanistan. The report gave the Afghan government's support of female
rights a rating of "weak but improving". "Despite last year's surge, the primary (school) enrolment rate (for girls) is amongst the lowest in the
world," the report said, adding that in certain southern provinces just 15
percent of pupils enrolled at primary schools were girls. Forty percent of
health facilities had no female staff, while 70 percent of those affected
by tuberculosis, a growing health threat in the country, were women.
Source: The World Bank |
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