World effort in Afghanistan under strain -- By Lyse Doucet

BBC News, Kabul:- In 2001 when world leaders promised Afghans they would "be with you for the long run", no-one realised then just how long this run would be - or where it would take them. --- And Afghans who welcomed their country's return to the international fold after the fall of the Taleban, are asking where the billions of dollars have gone and why the rebels' reach is growing.? --- But as one foreign consultant put it, there has been a "tsunami of well paid retired professionals", and little coherence, and sometimes contradictions, in the programmes of aid agencies. One hundred different organisations are each spending more than $100m in Afghanistan every year. ---- Afghan expectations, born of the pain of a quarter century of war and the promises of the world, may have been unreasonably high at the start. Their country remains one of the world's poorest and its biggest producer of opium poppies. Three-quarters of the population are illiterate, and even the capital has only a few hours of electricity a day.