January 7, 2002
With the war in Afghanistan all but over, one task facing its neighbours and the international community is the country's economic reconstruction. Over 22 years of war has devastated Afghanistan in the true sense of the word: the human death toll has been in excess of 1.5 million, while five million Afghans have sought refuge abroad, mostly in Pakistan and Iran. This is in addition to the millions displaced within the country.
The socio-economic infrastructure - modest even by Third World standards - stands destroyed. Such industry as Afghanistan has is virtually at a stand-still, while agriculture has been ruined, as orchards were destroyed or fruit-bearing trees cut down during the civil war as a matter of policy to punish the people of a given area. Also, at present there is this question of law and order. While a government is in place in Kabul, it is not fully in control of the situation. Besides, Anglo-American military operations to get Osma bin Laden and Mulla Omar continue. This militates against starting a reconstruction programme.
The world community now needs to identify and prioritize areas and sectors so that the task of reconstruction could begin when the moment arrives. Obviously, basics come first, which means the planners must focus on health, education, agriculture, road works, rehabilitation of the homeless and de-mining. Side by side, the process of institution building must continue, because interaction with the donor agencies and the inflow of foreign aid would not be possible without giving Afghanistan the mechanisms of a modern financial, monetary and fiscal system. Besides, the interim government needs technical and professional expertise to help run the system, because trained manpower has ceased to exist in Afghanistan. The task of exploiting gas and other mineral resources - which are not inconsiderable - can be taken up later, when a stable government is in full control of the administration.
At the last UNDP and World Bank-sponsored three-day Reconstruction of Afghanistan Conference in Islamabad, participants seemed preoccupied with their own notions of a 'civil society' that they thought Afghanistan needed, and spent time debating the issues that can wait. For instance, the delegates' insistence that Afghan women must have an active role in the reconstruction effort and that Afghan men must be disarmed before any reconstruction can begin was untimely and facetious.
Traditionally, a vast majority of Afghan women have never stepped out of their homes, and carrying firearms is part of many Afghan tribesmen's attire. Thus, the proposed cultural re-orientation of a nation cannot be made a priority in a country where millions go without food and drinking water and are at risk of being killed by infectious diseases and ubiquitous landmines.
Making the reconstruction efforts conditional upon such premises will not serve anyone's cause, much less that of the Afghan people. Indeed, many Afghans will see any such imposition of the 'global' - read western - paradigm of civil society as a cultural intervention, and thus resist it.
Disagreeing with this scheme of things and the similar demands made by other Afghan women's outfits operating in the west, Fatana Gailani, director of the Afghanistan Women Council, hit the nail on the spot the other day when she said: "Until our country has been rescued (from war and lawlessness), the women's issue is a non-issue." The same can be said about Afghan males carrying firearms as part of their attire. The international development agencies, at this point in time, should give priority to the reconstruction of infrastructure efforts and not to cultural re-orientation of the Afghan people.
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