At the root of Afghanistan's woes lie a stream of sweet words, promising things that were never meant and which never became reality. It was at an international conference in Bonn in 2001 that members of the international community met to consider how they could help Afghanistan. Seven and a half years later, 70 countries met again yesterday — this time in The Hague — to confront the result of all those broken pledges for aid and assistance both technical and financial. Though there have been some very positive developmental and infrastructural achievements, in some of which the Kingdom has played an honorable role, the most obvious change in Afghanistan has been the resurgence of the Taleban and their Al-Qaeda allies. The success of the insurgents has a great deal to do with the failure of the economic transformation that was promised so faithfully with the ouster of the Taleban.
But the Bush administration got bogged down in Iraq and Afghanistan became a distant secondary priority. Much of the rest of the international community chose to find reasons why their aid should not be delivered — the necessary technical or administrative infrastructure was not in place or there were fears that funds would be siphoned off by corrupt politicians or officials. This newspaper argued strongly seven years ago, when it was already clear that the aid program was failing, that the risk of corruption should not be ignored. Instead, money poured into the country, particularly targeting individual rural communities, to prove to Afghans, of whatever background, that change really was under way.
Now, at a time when the entire world is enduring serious financial constraints, there was belated recognition yesterday in The Hague that too little had been done too slowly. But the agenda has moved on since 2001. Today it is not simply a question of helping Afghans feel prosperous but more of allowing them to feel safe, in the face of a rising Taleban insurgency.
Because there is no definitive military solution, only the chance of containing the insurgents, the dominant theme at yesterday's conference was the need to talk to the Taleban — or at least to those elements in its loose-knit power structure who are prepared to listen. This is a policy beleaguered President Hamid Karzai announced that he was embracing fully. Unfortunately that has not always been his view. Fourteen months ago Karzai expelled two top diplomats, an Irishman working for the UN and a Briton, precisely because under the auspices of the British NATO contingent in Helmand province, they had been talking to tribal leaders who supported the Taleban. Both men knew Afghanistan well, were fluent Pashtun speakers and, if British sources are to be believed, were making some headway in their negotiations. The response from Kabul and the president's office was one of fury and the pair were bundled out of the country immediately.
Therefore, it is not just the new promises of international donors that need to come true at present but also Karzai's assurance that he will now talk to the Taleban.
Khmer Rouge trial a good start at last
As the man who ran the Khmer Rouge’s notorious S-21 prison in Cambodia stood before a UN-backed genocide tribunal accepting responsibility for torturing and executing thousands of inmates, The Guardian in its editorial yesterday detailed how previous attempts to bring the surviving members of the brutal regime to book were thwarted by the US and China. Excerpts:
Justice has been a long time coming — more than 30 years in Kaing Guek Eav’s case. The man accused of running the Khmer Rouge prison in Phnom Penh, where 12,380 people died, took a polite bow on Monday at the opening of his trial for genocide. Comrade Duch, as he was known, is the first Khmer Rouge leader to take the stand before a UN-backed tribunal.
That, however, is about the only good thing to emerge from Cambodia. For three decades, efforts to call to account the surviving members of a regime, which killed 1.7 million of their countrymen, have been sabotaged by the US, China and Hun Sen, the Cambodian prime minister respectively.
For the last decade Hun Sen has assiduously undermined efforts to establish a credible tribunal and progress of the cases under investigation has been glacial. Duch confessed to his sins 10 years ago, but his trial is starting only now. The tribunal called the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia, have been extraordinary indeed. The Cambodian judges have been accused of taking kickbacks. The prosecutors are reluctant to investigate despite the wealth of evidence from survivors. Only five Khmer Rouge have been charged, and Hun Sen himself has said he wants the tribunal to stop there.
Why? The US initially blocked attempts to put the Khmer Rouge on trial, while its insurgents were trying to force the Vietnamese Army out of Cambodia in the 1980s. Today the US no longer believes the tribunal is value for money, and indicated it wanted no more than a dozen prosecutions.
