TOKYO, Feb 22: The lightning-fast switch to a new Afghan currency embodies the determination of people in the war-torn nation to build a new, more prosperous life, Afghan President Hamid Karzai said on Saturday.

We changed the Afghan currency; we brought a new currency and we completed this whole process of change from the old currency to the new currency in a space of three months without the slightest of incidents, Karzai told reporters here during a four-day trip to Tokyo.

That showed again for us that the Afghan people really wanted this country to succeed.

Under the five-year regime of the hardline Taliban that ended in late 2001, Afghanistan used four currencies, each of varying legitimacy.

For many years of turmoil, war and catastrophe in Afghanistan, the Afghan currency has been destroyed to pieces, Karzai said.

You would take bags of money to a shop and come out with a small thing in your pocket. Now it is changed, now we take a little note in our pocket and come back with bags of things, he said.

After the fall of the Taliban, Afghan’s transitional administration cited patriotism when they rejected suggestions by IMF and World Bank officials to adopt the dollar to provide financial security.

The new currency was delivered nationwide on planes, on helicopters, on pick-up-trucks and on donkeyback, anything we had to use to get the money to the villages, to cities, to provinces and we succeeded remarkably well, Karzai added.

The new afghanis, worth 1,000 of the old notes, are hoped to eventually provide much-needed stability to the Afghan economy, still reeling after 23 years of devastating conflict.

Karzai was in Tokyo for a one-day international conference to secure pledges of $50 million in aid to help with a disarmament and reintegration program for the 100,000 former combatants still clinging to their warring ways and automatic weapons. —AFP