2008 Speeches and Articles
Money and Manpower Critical for Afghanistan's Future
Op-Ed in To Vima newspaper
on June 12, 2008
by U.S. Ambassador Daniel V. Speckhard
All too often, when a news story starts with “Afghanistan” these days, it is followed by “suicide bombing,” “casualties,” or “narcotics.” No doubt this reflects the tremendous challenges Afghanistan faces, but as representatives of more than 80 countries gather today in Paris to talk about how the international community can help, and as NATO Defense Ministers begin their annual meeting in Brussels, let me tell you about some good news from a place you might not have expected.
In the southern province of Helmand, 600 Afghan teenagers are attending a newly rebuilt high school, thanks to the work of an international team from the United States, United Kingdom, Estonia and Denmark, working alongside Afghan partners. In nearby Farah Province, American and Italian members of a Provincial Reconstruction Team have built a school, dug wells, distributed wheat seed to farmers, and re-built a market. Greece has provided cargo aircraft to transport humanitarian aid, deployed soldiers and civilians to help build badly needed roads and bridges and provide health care, and funded reconstruction projects in the Baghlan Province.
These development efforts—and thousands more like them—were made possible by international pledges made in connection with the 2006 donors’ conference for Afghanistan in London. Though aiding Afghanistan was and is clearly the moral choice, such assistance is not purely magnanimous; it directly benefits our own security in Europe, America and around the globe. Generous commitments of money and manpower are an investment in security for all of us, because the problems of Afghanistan do not respect international borders. Illicit narcotics from Afghanistan’s poppy crop kill on the streets of Europe, and the terrorists who found shelter in Afghanistan have murdered innocent people across the globe.
That is why NATO leaders, at the Bucharest Summit in April, renewed their long-term commitment to the mission, and why NATO Defense Ministers will be talking about Afghanistan again today and tomorrow. As Secretary General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer said: “If this mission were not to succeed...Afghanistan would once again post a clear and present danger to itself, its region, and the broader international community.”
New donor pledges today in Paris will also be critical to enable our Afghan partners to take the next step in their reconstruction and begin to meet the goals they set out in the new five-year Afghanistan National Development Strategy. The United States, which has contributed $26 billion, will pledge a substantial amount in support of these priorities.
Make no mistake, rebuilding Afghanistan is no simple, quick, or cheap task. Security and development are inexorably linked, and we face extremists that, though increasingly marginalized, have no qualms about purposely targeting civilians, destroying schools and clinics, or killing Afghan teachers and officials who are trying to rebuild their country.
Fortunately, the vast majority of Afghans oppose the terrorists’ goals and tactics. Afghanistan has come a long way from the days of the Taliban, who stoned women to death and barred girls from attending school. Today, more than 1.5 million Afghan girls are attending school, and total school enrollment has risen from about 900,000 to more than 6 million.
In the past six years, more than 13,000 kilometers of roads have been improved or built, including the new Afghanistan-Tajikistan Friendship Bridge, and three-quarters of the population have access to telecommunications. Per capita GDP has risen by over 70 percent. Afghans today not only live more prosperous lives, but also healthier ones. The percentage of residents with access to health care has risen from 9 percent to 85 percent just in the past four years.
Afghanistan is also on the path toward democracy: over 75 percent of eligible voters turned out for the nation’s first free and democratic presidential elections in 2004, and there are now more than 100 registered political parties in the country. To continue this progress, Afghanistan needs pledges of support for elections in 2009 and 2010, including funds for voter registration, election administration, and voter awareness programs.
Meanwhile, we must make clear that we have increasing expectations for the Afghanistan government. Its new National Solidarity Program, a government-initiated, bottom-up development scheme in which thousands of Afghan villages have become actively involved in designing their own development projects, is a welcome sign of the support it is getting from the Afghan people. But corruption remains a serious problem, and donors have to know that their contributions are fully accounted for and reaching the Afghan people. International donors can do their part by better coordinating their development projects, and improving assistance monitoring.
Future generations will look back to see how we helped the Afghan people recover from nearly three decades of brutal war. They will also ask whether we did enough to protect Europe, America and the world from the threats of instability and terrorism. Today’s donor conference in Paris, as was the case in London in 2006, will be another milestone and a test. The world is watching. Let’s hope the historians will not ask “Did they do enough?” but instead say, “How did they do so much?”
http://www.tovimadaily.gr/Article.aspx?d=20080612&nid=8826510
