September 16, 2003	Tuesday	Rajab 18, 1424

KABUL: Afghanistan will be on a “road to hell” unless the outside world provides more reconstruction funds urgently and improves security by deploying peacekeepers around the country, a report said on Monday.

A forthcoming policy brief from aid agency Care and the New York-based Center on International Cooperation (CIC) said the promises made in the aftermath of the September 11, 2001, attacks on the United States had not been fulfilled.

“Putting Afghanistan on the road to peace needs more than good intentions, it needs urgent action,” they said.

“If donors continue to try to fulfil their pledges on the cheap or allow for further delays, they will set Afghanistan on a road to hell that Afghans know too well.”

Care and CIC said insecurity was growing — especially outside Kabul — with 62 attacks on UN or aid agency staff from May to August, compared with just five attacks in the last four months of 2002.

“It is simply not right that while Kosovo, Bosnia, Croatia and East Timor had an average of one peacekeeper for every 65 people, Afghanistan still only has one ISAF member for every 5,380 people,” they said.

They said more military-led Provincial Reconstruction Teams around the country might help, but it was “dangerously misleading” to suggest these teams, which will focus more on reconstruction than security, could replace a peacekeeping force.—Reuters