Afghan's interim leader, Mr Hamid Karzai, arrived in Japan this morning for a donors' conference where he must outline a vision of how to rebuild his country, devastated by decades of strife and disaster.
Officials from more than 60 governments and international organizations will meet in Tokyo tomorrow and Tuesday to pledge funds for a reconstruction process that aid experts estimate will take $15 billion over a decade, much of it in the initial stage.
Success of the long and costly endeavor, participants agree, is key to ensuring that Afghanistan does not again breed radical movements such as the Taliban and Saudi-born millionaire Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda network.
"If we leave a hole in Afghanistan, what we are going to get out of that hole is more terrorism and more drugs," said a US official traveling with Secretary of State Colin Powell ahead of Gen Powell's arrival in Tokyo last night.
Mr Karzai, who will be making his international debut at the conference, needs assurances the world won't turn its back on Afghanistan now that the war against the Taliban has been won.
Donors want proof that Kabul has a viable plan to wean the economy off its drug trade dependence and promote equality for women, harshly oppressed under the Taliban rule, and that they can keep track of how their contributions are spent.
"You can't just pour water into dry sand," said one Western diplomatic source.
The four conference co-hosts - Japan, the US, the EU and Saudi Arabia - are expected to foot most of the bill.
Japanese government sources said Tokyo was likely to pledge as much as $500 million over the next 2 years, of which media said half would be provided in the first year.
European Union officials have said they hoped to pump at least $500 million a year into the effort, or about one-quarter of the $9 billion to $12 billion they see needed over the first five years.