BERLIN: The international community has virtually given up helping rebuild Afghanistan, contributing peacekeeping troops and fighting the production of drugs there, a leading human rights group said on Tuesday.
"The international community over the last two years has basically dropped the ball on reconstruction," said Human Rights Watch Afghanistan researcher John Sifton, ahead of a major conference in Berlin.
Mr Sifton said seven billion dollars had been pledged for rebuilding at a donor conference in Tokyo two years ago, but that less than six billion was allotted and just 2.9 billion found its way into the accounts of implementing agencies.
"Only about 112 million dollars has resulted in completed reconstruction projects," he said. "Only 1.5 percent of its pledges was actually implemented." The two-day conference in Berlin starting on Wednesday is aimed at winning renewed promises of money for reconstruction and assessing what is needed to establish more security and stability.
Mr Sifton said Afghanistan badly needs peacekeepers to help bring security to areas outside the capital Kabul but that countries in the West were blaming each other for not doing enough rather taking substantial action.
"When the pledges are made they are talking hundreds instead of thousands of troops," he said. Another key element of the conference will be how to combat the production of illegal drugs, which is Afghanistan's biggest industry.
"They are not going away, they are getting stronger. It is estimated now that they have 2.3 billion dollars in drug profits coming into Afghanistan," Sifton said.
He said that profits from the production of illegal drugs exceeded the amount of money being spent on reconstruction and that military and police officials were involved in much of the trafficking. -AFP
