A precarious situation

AFGHANISTAN continues to face a precarious situation amid growing tribal factionalism and the failure of the government to extend its writ beyond Kabul. The slow pace of progress being made since the fall of the Taliban regime 22 months ago is disquieting. President Hamid Karzai’s interim administration has been in office since June last year, but many of the tasks assigned to it by the Loya Jirga for its two-year term — drafting of a new constitution, formation of a national Afghan army, preparing for elections, etc. — have barely begun. This is due mainly to a shortage of funds and lack of internal security. The defence ministry reforms announced by Mr Karzai at the weekend and an additional two million dollars pledged by the US treasury secretary last week are good omens provided these are carried through.

In this context, a report published by Care, an American relief agency operating in Afghanistan, is worth noticing. It admits with dismay that so far only one per cent of the total internationally pledged reconstruction work has been completed. Lack of security and increasing influence of regional warlords controlling most of the country beyond the precincts of the capital, Kabul, are said to be the main reasons for what Care calls ‘donor fatigue’. The Nato-led International Security Assistance Force (Isaf) has failed to extend its authority beyond Kabul, where, according to recent statistics, crime rate has surged seven-fold during the last one year. Tribal warlords are reportedly running private prisons, bonded labour camps and smuggling rackets. Poppy cultivation has seen an alarming rise since the ouster of the Taliban, with the UN confirming that Afghanistan now accounts for 76 percent of the total global opium production; that is up from just 12 per cent last year. It is these illegal activities on the part of the warlords that have deterred international relief and aid organizations from venturing out of Kabul and implementing rehabilitation and reconstruction programmes.

While much of the world’s attention has been focused on the American-led war on Iraq in recent months, it is no good reason to put Afghanistan on the back burner. It is after all a country to which the international community did pledge financial and political assistance to help it stand back on its feet. But the way things have been taking shape in Afghanistan, there is a real cause for concern. An abandoned and destabilized Afghanistan can once again prove to be anathema to regional and world peace. Continued expressions of good intentions on the part of the US, EU and the Nato member countries are not good enough. Afghanistan needs nearly $20 billion dollars within the next few years to put it back on track as one viable and responsible nation governed by rule of law rather than by a bunch of tribal warlords and foolhardy desperadoes. The task may be a daunting one but any further delay in taking it up and seeing it through will only prolong the misery of millions of poor Afghans as well as bring back all the demons that have only just been exorcised from its system.

And yet so far

THE record books will say that Bangladesh made the most abysmal tour ever to these shores. They lost the Test series 0-3 and the one-day games 0-5 and it was a comprehensive whitewash. Yet nothing can be farther from the truth. They came as close to winning the Test match at Multan as they ever will and with a little bit of luck they could have beaten Pakistan in the one-day match in Rawalpindi. In Multan, they were thwarted by Inzamamul Haq who played the innings of a lifetime and Pakistan were home by the barest of margins. In the Rawalpindi day-night ODI, fielding lapses in the crucial stages of the game cost them dearly.

In Habibul Bashar, Rajin Saleh and Alok Kapali, Bangladesh have the nucleus on which to build for future encounters. Habibul Bashar was a bit of a disappointment in the one-day games, but in the Test matches, he more than held his own with a determined hundred in the Karachi Test. Like Rajin Saleh, he has a limited range of strokes but given some width outside of the off stump, the two revelled in cutting and driving with abandon. Solid in defence, however, both Habibul Bashar and Rajin Saleh could not force the pace at the required rate. They tended to play more for themselves than for their team with almost always disastrous results. Young Kapali, on the other hand, likes to get on with it. In addition, he is useful leg spinner and he proved it by performing a hat-trick in the Peshawar Test. We are bound to hear more from him in the years ahead. The Bangladeshis fielded well throughout the tour and were often superb in the country. Bangladesh won a lot of friends wherever they played and they must be taking a lot of happy memories back home.

Pakistan, in the process of rebuilding their side, lost skipper Rashid Latif who was banned for the one-day series for misconduct. Inzamamul Haq who deputized for him did himself proud by winning all the five one-day games. A more serious blow, however, came towards the end of the Bangladesh tour when South Africa decided to pull out of a tour of Pakistan ostensibly for security reasons. Here is a case of courage giving way to cowardice. Pakistan would have benefited greatly had the tour been allowed to proceed as scheduled. There is time yet for South Africa to review their unfortunate decision.

Karachi’s battered roads

The monsoon is long gone but the reconstruction of Karachi’s roads, as promised by the city’s Nazim, seems nowhere in sight. In fact, during a visit to the Karachi Nuclear Power Plant (Kanupp) earlier last week, he said that a Rs100 million plan to widen the existing road leading to the plant — situated on the city’s outskirts — was under consideration. Any scheme to rebuild a road or to construct a new one would normally be welcomed, but the fact of the matter is that many city roads, situated in neighbourhoods far more congested and populated than the area around Kanupp, are in desperate need of re-carpeting. On more than one occasion the Nazim has said that the city’s roads would be rebuilt once the monsoon ended. That being the case, and given the fact that travelling on Karachi’s roads has become a harrowing experience, one can only wonder at the delay.

Major arteries like Korangi Road and the main Clifton Road are in such a terrible state that every evening they become clogged with traffic jams. The former is used by heavy goods vehicles and by many intra-city commuters and has been in need of repair and recarpeting for a couple of years. A huge package of Rs 29 billion has already been approved for the rebuilding of Karachi’s infrastructure so the usual excuse of not having enough funds is no longer there as a ground for inaction. What is the city government or the myriad other agencies which have a stake in Karachi’s physical assets waiting for? Many streets most in need of repair come under the jurisdiction of the various cantonment boards, most of which seem to be apathetic to the inconvenience caused to motorists by the potholed roads. The process of recarpeting must begin immediately. Contractors who built roads that now fully reveal the substandard work done should be excluded from all renovation and repairs.