International donors have told Afghanistan's new government it will receive billions of dollars in aid if it keeps the peace between rival ethnic groups. The EU, Japan, Saudi Arabia and the US led a conference in Brussels yesterday, aimed at assessing how best to help to reconstruct Afghanistan after 20 years of conflict.
The EU External Affairs Commissioner, Mr Chris Patten, said that, although the US-led military operation was almost complete, the task of "winning the peace" in Afghanistan would be an awesome one.
"We are dealing with a failed state, a state with no working institutions, its infrastructure in ruins, many of its best brains in exile. One where half the population - the women - have been denied a voice, and have even been denied their basic human rights such as education and health. Law and order problems are widespread."
The conference agreed to give the new government $20 million immediately to pay salaries and create the basic infrastructure of government. A conference in Japan in January will decide on longer-term funding but the US Treasury Under-Secretary for International Affairs, Mr John Taylor, said Afghanistan could expect billions of dollars over the coming years.
"In a 10-year period, $10 billion would certainly be the kind of numbers you would come up with, thinking about needs and capacity of the country," he said.
The most immediate tasks will be the restoration of food security, the return of refugees, clearing the country of millions of landmines, providing seeds to farmers and opening up schools. Two-thirds of Afghanistan's 20 million people are short of food, fewer than one in four have access to safe water and only 3 per cent of girls go to school.
Landmines kill or maim 10 people every day and child mortality is among the highest in the world.
Among the most formidable challenges is facilitating the return of refugees, including about three million in Pakistan, 2.5 million in Iran and up to 1.5 million who are displaced within Afghanistan itself.
Mr Patten said that, as the world's biggest donor, the EU had long been conscious of the need to help failed states but this had become more clear following the terrorist attacks on New York and Washington. "The events of September 11th brought home to us that the existence of failed states is, without question, something which contributes to both regional and global instability. That is a problem to which we must devote more time, more political energy, and more money."
