Monday, December 04, 2006

Missed chances, Afghanistan: A job half done -- By Lyse Doucet

Afghanistan is still a place awash with guns, where commanders and local officials can impose their will with impunity, where many Afghans say their lives have changed little. There is no doubting some progress, but why did billions of dollars in aid and thousands of foreign troops not make more of a difference? -- Former Afghan finance minister Ashraf Ghani insists the world's aid agencies simply weren't equipped for state building in an impoverished country emerging from a quarter century of war. -- "In 2002, the warlords and commanders were shaking in their boots fearing they were going to be disarmed or cast aside," recalls Francesc Vendrell, the former UN envoy who is the now the EU's man in Kabul. "Now its much more difficult." -- Five years on, Afghanistan's powerful regional leaders no longer command private armies but in province after province, men with guns now have access to state resources and positions of power. Huge cracks have been exposed in this state building exercise. including the failure to focus enough attention on rebuilding institutions like the judiciary and police. -- President Karzai is often blamed for making poor choices when it comes to appointing provincial governors and police chiefs. -- Lakhdar Brahimi worries that he and others were wrong not to bring the Taleban into the political process as early as 2002. Former US envoy to Afghanistan Zalmay Khalilzad told me he wished more attention had been paid to Taleban "sanctuaries" across the border in Pakistan. -- Five years on, there is consensus on an urgent need to get a grip on the situation. -- It is more difficult now with the emergence of a new "mafia": a nexus of drug smugglers, criminals, and in some provinces Taleban, filling a vacuum left by the government.

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