Problems facing Afghanistan make for chilling reading

The success of the Bonn talks between Afghan opposition groups this week in producing an agreed coalition should allow discussions to start in earnest on how the country can be helped to face up to its massive problems, from reconstruction, to poverty alleviation, to institution building, and to the related challenge of creating a stable security environment.

And that process can be informed by a timely report launched this week by the International Crisis Group (ICG) on the priorities for reconstruction*.

The still little-known private multinational organisation works in political flashpoints - it is currently in 19 countries - to produce well-researched policy options papers for the international community, and in its few years has justifiably garnered a substantial reputation in diplomatic circles for even-handedness and outspokenness. (It is funded by private donations, foundations, and 15 governments, including Ireland. The group's chairman is the former Finnish President Martti Ahtisaari, and chief executive, the former Australian foreign minister, Gareth Evans).

ICG's conclusions on Afghanistan's needs make chilling reading. The required cash injections by the international community are likely to be qualitatively larger and over a far longer period than has been discussed to date. The report quotes the World Bank's rough rule of thumb that post-conflict reconstruction costs run to about a billion dollars a decade for each million people in a country to come up with a figure for Afghanistan of $25 billion over ten years. To which the same again should be added, it says, in support for the neighbouring republics.

That's $50 billion over 10 years, a far cry from the UN Development Programme's initial $6 billion over five years assessment.

Yet it must be found. "The strategic risks of continued upheaval in the region warrant a considerable commitment of resources over a long period," the report argues persuasively.

Given the costs of the war to the US, said to be of the order of one billion dollars a month above normal costs, and "given the costs associated with the terror attacks \on September 11th\ - put by many analysts at between $100 and $200 billion - it would be foolish to skimp on reconstruction and relief efforts that could avert the sources of future instability and violence".

Robert Templer, the Asia programme director of the ICG, who played a major part in producing he report, warns of the danger that although short-term aid may be quickly forthcoming, longer term support may suffer from donors' usually short attention span. Yet, unless the people of Afghanistan feel a real difference in their lives, he warns, the instability which has been a feature of the country is likely to remain and infect the entire region.

That will mean money from all over the world but also a major rethink from the US on its international aid budget, still languishing at only 0.1 per cent of GNP, compared to the UN target of 0.8 per cent. But there's precious little if any support for increasing it in Congress.

The report also makes specific recommendations about how it should be spent, urging a decentralised approach to funding to recognise the inevitability that central government in the new Afghan state will be weak.

The emphasis should be on infrastructure, education, and healthcare, with strong local imputs into programme planning and execution. The role of women and the education of girls need to be given a special place.

And the report calls for a programme of opium control through a regional co-ordinated plan of crop-substitution, rural development and harm reduction with a strong focus on HIV, a massive hidden problem.

The ICG attaches particular importance to human rights and ending what it calls "the climate of impunity" in the country. "There have never been serious international efforts to bring to justice anyone responsible for human rights violations in Afghanistan. Independent human rights groups as well as UN investigators frequently point out that the resulting climate of impunity has led to a cycle of abuses," the report says.

"In the most obvious example the failure of UN agencies to investigate the massacre of more than 3,000 Taliban troops in and around Mazar-e-Sharif in 1997 may have contributed to the subsequent massacre by the Taliban of at least Hazara residents when the Taliban took control of the city the following year." Indeed, the very same cycle may have contributed in no small part to the fear of retribution that probably played a part in sparking the bloody failed rising in the city's prison only 10 days ago.

ICG recommends building in human rights protections into any coalition agreement for governing Afghanistan with international monitoring and training. That must be accompanied, it says, by a serious attempt to prosecute war crimes and the report cites the extraordinary efforts of the people of the town of Yakaolang in chronicling in affidavits a local Taliban massacre as evidence of a local desire for justice.

Despite the Taliban's attempts to burn the town down the affidavits had been hidden away and survived and now form the basis of a local campaign for a war crimes tribunal.

*Afghanistan and Central Asia: Priorities for Reconstruction and Development. It can be found on the ICG website at www.crisisweb.org.

psmyth@irish-times.ie