Nations Around the World Start Planning to Help Afghanistan Recovery
(UNDP chief says U.S. sponsored meeting will lead off efforts) (1080) By Judy Aita Washington File United Nations Correspondent United Nations -- As the military and political developments on the ground move quickly toward a day when the Taliban will no longer be in a position to influence events in Afghanistan, the United Nations, the United States and other nations have also begun work on plans to help the country rebuild. A series of meetings scheduled over the next weeks and months will work on plans for Afghanistan's long-term recovery, the third and final leg in the international community's efforts to help the Afghans with the political, humanitarian, and reconstruction of their country. Mark Malloch-Brown, the Administrator of the UN Development Program, has been asked by Secretary General Kofi Annan to take responsibility for the recovery effort while Annan's Special Representative for Afghanistan Lakhdar Brahimi is involved in trying to set up a meeting of all Afghan parties to form an interim administration and his deputy, Francesc Vandrell, has returned to Kabul to coordinate UN humanitarian efforts. The United Nations system "is braced and poised for a major effort and what I can do is offer some leadership at the global level to try to make sure that we have a strong partnership with other organizations...make sure, given the scale of needs, that there is room for everybody in this important international recovery and reconstruction operation," Malloch-Brown said. The United States and Japan have organized the first Afghan reconstruction meeting of donors and international organizations for November 20 in Washington and it will be followed by another session in January. A previously scheduled meeting of the UNDP, the World Bank and the Asian Development Bank -- in which 200 Afghans are participating -- is set for later in November and the European Afghan support group under the chairmanship of Germany is also to meet later this year. The November 20 meeting is "a very useful effort by the U.S. and Japan to start a process to clarify thinking and trying to arrive at a consensus on the scale of approaches and mechanisms," the UNDP Administrator said at a press conference at the UN November 19. "It is important that while there is this level of political attention to the problem and display of real political will behind helping Afghanistan that we capture and channel that energy into a bankable series of commitments to the reconstruction of the country," Malloch-Brown said. "Now we have a new and equally vital challenge which is to structure a recovery and reconstruction program which supports Brahimi's peace building efforts." As the military situation on the ground has changed, he said, donor nations, Afghanistan's neighbors, as well as Afghans themselves have become increasingly anxious to see reconstruction planning get underway. Malloch-Brown feels that the United Nations and its agencies are in the best position to coordinate the effort because of the knowledge of the country they developed working in Afghanistan on humanitarian aid programs for years. "We have some clear thoughts at the country level and the national level of the first tasks to be undertaken. The key thing is to organize them," he said. "We have 250 international staff in the region both ready to go back in to work on the humanitarian tasks...but also to work on these recovery efforts under the UN development group banner." The UN also has 2200 Afghan nationals working for UNDP, UNICEF, the World Food Program, and other UN agencies both inside Afghanistan and in refugee camps in neighboring countries. "The pool of human Afghan talent that we can deploy to begin moving things forward is enormous," he said. "That is, of course, critical because...it is not the UN's intention to run Afghanistan for the next few years. Its (intention) is to deploy support to an Afghan-led government and administration of the country." "As a general point we think it is time to get going. It is time to get our people into the country and be working as aggressively as possible," Malloch-Brown said. Until the terrorist attacks on the United States of September 11, "Afghanistan was one of those forgotten causes" where only the traditional donors such as the United States, Sweden and the other Nordic countries, the Netherlands, and the United Kingdom were the only ones providing aid -- although with great difficulty because of the obstructions placed by the Taliban regime, the UNDP administrator said. Now with a new political climate in Afghanistan, the UN is hoping to see nations from other regions, such as the Persian Gulf, provide assistance for the monumental work that needs to be done. Also important is getting the World Bank and the IMF involved early in the process, so there is no gap between the relief and reconstruction phases, the UNDP Administrator said. "We want to overcome the situation in the past where you have this very fragmented effort where you would have a relief operation which one day would be declared a victory and stop. You then get a terrible gap period while the international financial institutions mobilized and financial stability is assured. In fact, in that period many countries actually slip in terms of their peace building," he said. How many years and how much such projects will cost no one yet knows, Malloch-Brown said. However, he noted that the "non-paper" the U.S. and Japan have prepared for the November 20 meeting talks of a period of five to eight years. "So everybody is thinking long term. But once one comes up with a credible figure and starts to pass out shares, I'm sure there will be some digestive difficulties," he added. Malloch-Brown said "quick impact projects" to begin now include restarting community development activities, restoring community services, and seeing that resources reach the people. Construction projects include restoring electricity, water supplies, and many roads that are now unusable. The country's infrastructure "has taken a terrible hit, not as a consequence of the bombing campaign, but it has deteriorated over many years," he said. "There is also an equally critical task of beginning to restore at least nascent national institutions, start building the human capacity among Afghans who can be the future staffs of ministries of health, education, and so on," the UNDP Administrator said. (The Washington File is a product of the Office of International Information Programs, U.S. Department of State. Web site: http://usinfo.state.gov)
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