Military

DATE=3/29/04

TYPE=BACKGROUND REPORT

TITLE=AFGHANISTAN / CONFERENCE

NUMBER=5-55098

BYLINE=GARY THOMAS

DATELINE=WASHINGTON

CONTENT=

VOICED AT:

INTRO: A two-day international donors' conference on Afghanistan is set to open in Berlin Wednesday. The Afghan interim government is looking for new pledges of aid as it struggles to rebuild a shattered nation. As VOA correspondent Gary Thomas reports, some of Afghanistan's toughest tests yet still lie ahead as it tries to become a functioning, democratic state.

TEXT: The Berlin donors conference is expected to be the clearest barometer to date of the international community's commitment to a free and stable Afghanistan.

Some 50 countries are sending representatives to the Berlin conference, where Afghan officials will lay out their country's requirements for some nearly 28 billion dollars in international assistance over the next seven years. The country needs more than four billion dollars in this fiscal year alone. The United States has already promised to put up two-point-two billion dollars of that, with nearly one billion more dollars coming from the European Union.

The conference comes at what many analysts say is a critical juncture for Afghanistan. Security across the country remains haphazard. Opium production is at record highs. Petty chieftains -- many of them involved in the drug trade -- control wide areas of territory, indifferent to the weak central government. Elections -- originally scheduled for June -- have been postponed.

Teresita Schaffer, former U-S deputy assistant secretary of state for South Asia, says highways, governmental stability, and, above all, security are Afghanistan's greatest needs right now.

/// SCHAFFER ACT ///

There are three absolutely critical ingredients. One is the roads. Another is security -- not just in Kabul but around the country. And a third is creating the outlines of a functioning government in Kabul that can make its reach felt outside of Kabul as well. And these three all go hand in glove.

/// END ACT ///

Against this backdrop, Interim President Hamid Karzai Sunday announced the June elections have been re-scheduled for September. Analysts cite several reasons for the delay: only a fraction of eligible voters have been registered so far, the security situation remains shaky, and the sheer logistics of mounting presidential and parliamentary polls in such a short time are overwhelming.

Ms. Schaffer praises Mr. Karzai's decision to delay the elections.

/// SCHAFFER ACT ///

I think, frankly, that this was a bow to good sense. Holding elections in any circumstance is a difficult job. But in this case what Afghanistan had set itself up to do was not just to elect a president -- which would require a whole new voter registration enterprise and a nationwide ballot collecting enterprise -- but also to elect a parliament.

/// END ACT ///

In a telephone interview, Barnett Rubin, director of studies at New York University's Center on International Cooperation, says any election in Afghanistan would run into problems.

/// RUBIN ACT ///

At the moment there's no one in Afghanistan who has the experience of conducting actual democratic elections, so everyone who's involved in it is either a foreigner or being trained newly in it. So, given the lack of roads, communication, literacy, experience, it's inevitable that any election is going to be quite troubled.

/// END ACT ///

The elections are to be held under United Nations auspices, but it remains unclear who will provide security for the polls themselves. (SIGNED)

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