Rebuilding Afghanistan

AS US forces continue their operations against Al Qaeda and Taliban elements in Afghanistan, there is growing fear that the military aspects of the operation are overshadowing other equally important areas of concern. In particular, the important task of rebuilding the war-ravaged country and rehabilitating its battered population is moving at a very slow pace. The country’s infrastructure is in a shattered state following two decades of war and fratricidal fighting and requires a major international effort to put back into place. The education and health system has to be rebuilt virtually from scratch. There is no proper police force or judiciary nor is there a mechanism for enforcing law and order. While the country has large numbers of militias owing allegiance to one local warlord or the other, there is no national army that could help unite the fragmented country. To make matters worse, years of civil war have divided the country along ethnic lines, with each group deeply distrustful of the other’s motives.

Clearly, the challenges facing the government in Kabul are daunting and will require a tremendous effort — as well as generous injections of cash and technical assistance — if they are to be met. Only a tiny proportion of the five billion dollars of aid pledged by donors has been made available so far. One reason for this is the prevailing law and order situation in the country. Alarmingly, the writ of President Hamid Karzai’s administration barely runs beyond the periphery of the capital. The international peacekeeping forces stationed in the country are not permitted to step outside the city limits. Beyond the capital, powerful warlords hold sway, virtually independent of Kabul. Perhaps the most challenging task facing the Karzai government is to bring these warlords under the control of the central government. Given that these local influentials have large militias at their command, this is not going to be an easy task. There is no national army that could undertake the formidable task of disarming the warlords. While the US is training personnel for the new Afghan army, the process is moving extremely slowly and could take years to complete. The commander of the US forces in Afghanistan has confirmed that American troops could remain in the country for several years until the Afghan government can run its own affairs smoothly.

However, the Bush administration is being criticized, even at home, for moving too slowly and not having a clear-cut plan of dealing with the multi-dimensional problems confronting Afghanistan. The US reluctance to mount and speed up a massive nation-building effort is cause for concern. The international community, and the US in particular, have a moral responsibility to expedite the process of rebuilding and rehabilitation. This will require not just the vast quantities of funds promised soon after the US launched its war against terror in Afghanistan but also technical assistance and trained manpower. While the military operations against Al Qaeda and the remnants of the Taliban continue, America and its allies must move rapidly to give the Afghans a stake in the future of the country. The process of rebuilding would revive the shattered economy and bring jobs to the people which could stem the country’s dangerous drift towards fragmentation. If the current situation is allowed to continue, Afghanistan could well fall prey to further conflict, plunging the entire region into greater instability.

Visa restrictions

IT IS heartening to note that the British High Commission has decided to resume visa services for Pakistani students intending to travel to the UK. Reduction in tensions with India has been cited as the main reason, with a number of staff posted in Pakistan returning to normal duty. The resumption could not have come at a better time, since thousands of Pakistani students are currently in the process of applying for visas to proceed abroad for higher education. Many of them had been adversely affected by the earlier decision to curtail visa services. The most favoured destinations remain America and Britain, followed, of late, by Canada and Australia. Unfortunately, apart from Britain, which has just restored normal visa operations only for students, the rest of the missions have severely curtailed their visa services, usually for security reasons. Tensions between India and Pakistan, and the attacks on Christians and western nationals compounded the worries of foreign governments, prompting them to take some drastic steps. Those who have suffered the most have been bona fide visa applicants like students, businessmen and tourists.

However, one hopes that western governments will take a pragmatic view of things. Since September 11 the world has changed irrevocably, with security concerns understandably assuming great importance. Unfortunately, the level of paranoia and the racial and ethnic profiling that followed the tragedy have not helped matters. In some cases, foreign governments seem to have over-reacted, as seems to be the case with Washington which has radically changed its visa policy to students of Pakistani origin. It is reassuring that Islamabad intends to take up the matter with the US State Department. Hopefully, the Americans and other governments will take a cue from the British and resume normal visa operations at the earliest so that the hardships being faced by intending Pakistani visitors can be minimized.

Rituals alone won’t do

THE Karachi Nazim, amid much pomp and ceremony, has announced a ten-day-long cleanliness drive in the city from next Thursday. The announcement makes one wonder what the civic body was up to the whole year, as providing clean streets and a healthy civic environment are its very basic and primary functions. Nonetheless, the drive is being launched in right earnest with the aim of unclogging the choked rainwater drains, cleaning up street kerbs and the Clifton beach and spraying insecticides around the city. One also hopes that the city government will also remove the heaps of garbage its sanitation staff has been customarily dumping in public parks and open spaces around the city.

The Nazim admitted some of the failures of his government, especially on account of the general lack of cleanliness in the city. He stated that the city did not have adequate equipment and vehicles needed to remove and properly dispose of garbage. These, he said, had now been purchased at a cost of Rs 40 million. He said that all the city’s 178 union councils were now geared up for the cleanliness drive. Maintaining sanitation and a clean environment is a year-round job that the city government is entrusted to perform on a daily basis without fail. Given the amount of filth and garbage that have accumulated because of long periods of neglect by the agencies concerned, a cleanliness drive will definitely help in cleaning up the city. But this should not mean that the civic agencies go back to their old ways once the drive is over.