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Mr. President,
The General Assembly and the gathering of senior ministers from more than
twenty nations last Friday in support of Afghanistan has offered a timely
opportunity for the international community to renew its commitment to
Afghanistan and to reflect on what has been achieved and, more importantly,
on what still has to be done. Careful stocktaking is required as the Transitional
Authority initiates its two-year mandate and begins to grapple with the
challenges of consolidating peace in Afghanistan.
The assassination attempt on President Karzai on the 5th of September,
and the car bombing in Kabul the same day, once again illustrate the difficult
security environment that the Transitional Administration is facing. It
is also a fact that the people of Afghanistan expect real improvement
in their daily life. The prestige and legitimacy of the Transitional Administration
will depend therefore on its ability to address effectively the most pressing
security and recovery needs. Should it fail, fragmentation will become
more entrenched, extremism will rise, and then foreign countries, groups
or individuals may be drawn once again into the fray, and the resumption
of widespread violence will most likely ensue. Mr.
President,
Afghanistan has come a long way, nevertheless. It would have been inconceivable
a year ago to imagine an Afghan President, elected by secret ballot,
standing before the General Assembly and outlining a vision of an Afghan
State determined to modernize itself, building on the rich heritage
of Islamic civilization, to promote justice, the rule of law, human
rights and freedom, an Afghanistan determined to promote tolerance and
achieve prosperity. These are noble and worthwhile objectives, but President
Karzai knows better than anyone else, and he said so last week at every
occasion, that Afghanistan will not achieve these goals without committed,
sustained and generous support from the international community.
Facing the twin challenges of security and recovery is not something
that the Transitional Administration can achieve alone. It simply does
not have the resources. Major infrastructure projects – in transport
and roads, energy and telecommunications, mines and industry, water
and agriculture - that can bring jobs, improve economic and trade prospects
and facilitate foreign investment require a very significant financial
and technical input from outside Afghanistan.
Last week’s announcement of a $180 million aid package from the
United States of America, Japan, and Saudi Arabia for road construction
is an extremely positive development. We are also heartened by the European
Union’s pledge to rehabilitate the Kabul to Jalalabad road.
But we must remember that today the Transitional Administration in Afghanistan
lacks the very modest budget required to meet its basic recurrent costs.
I hope that the donors have heard President Karzai’s urgent appeal,
and I hope that we all remember the comments made in Tokyo by the Secretary-General
to the effect that today’s millions are worth tomorrow’s
billions.
It is also important to note, with President Karzai, that most international
funding is still going to humanitarian assistance, which is necessary
but not quite sufficient to bring back peace and stability to the country.
Without massive job creation, the country cannot handle some of the
most immediate peace-building tasks. Hundreds of thousands of jobs have
to be created to enable impoverished Afghans to earn a living and climb
out of debt, and to accommodate the flow of returning refugees, mainly
from Pakistan and Iran; hundreds of thousands more jobs need to be created
for comprehensive disarmament and reintegration to be achieved, or for
viable alternatives to poppy cultivation to be offered. In a stable
and safe society, employment-generation on this scale would be expected
to result largely from private investment. In the context of Afghanistan
today, there is no immediate alternative to international public investment.
This may seem an ambitious undertaking. But it is the price of peace
and stability.
One way of achieving this is through a concerted strategy that links
assistance priorities with the requirements of political reconstruction
and stability. It is necessary to accelerate the implementation of nationwide
programmes such as the World Bank-supported Solidarity Program, which
aims to inject income into communities through large labour intensive,
and cash-for-work schemes. The focus of these projects will be on essential
economic and social infrastructure such as the rehabilitation of feeder
roads, local water works, schools and health centers.
The Transitional Administration needs urgent financial assistance at
the moment for its ambitious project of introducing a new currency.
Much work has been done already and if all goes well the operation will
begin early next month. The United Nations believes that the initiative
will have a positive impact on promoting national unity, economic stability
and social cohesion. As part of this process, the government of Afghanistan
will also address the revitalization of the financial and banking systems
throughout the country. The UN is supporting this process by assisting
in the procurement, logistics, planning and monitoring of the operation.
I urge the international community to respond positively to the Afghan
Administration’s request for donor support for this important
nationwide exercise.
The Transitional Administration is taking a leadership role in planning
for the future and the United Nations is committed to supporting the
government in the development of the National Development Framework
and the National Budget in the coming month. Ministers have been encouraged
to establish their own vision and priorities. The Minister of Education,
for example, has already set the priorities for education for the next
18 months, reinforcing a simple message: a roof for every school, a
textbook for every child, and tables and chairs in every classroom.
One aim of the United Nations is to support and help develop the capacity
of the government. The Afghan cabinet and UNAMA are working together
to accelerate the development of the government, to decentralize assistance
and develop sub-national programmes tailored to the needs of individual
provinces, and to develop a more integrated and cost-effective UN response.
Progress has already been made and the United Nations is supporting
national authorities to assume an increasingly central role in the coordination
of assistance. An increasing number of UN personnel are being located
in government offices to support the Transitional Administration in
the development of its policies and activities. The United Nations is
supporting government institutions to develop national information,
vulnerability analysis and nutrition surveillance systems, and to track
donor support and aid flows. These are functions that the UN itself
was performing alone less than 12 months ago. In the coming months,
this support should be further developed with an overall capacity building
plan that focuses on civil service reform, and the increasing decentralization
of integrated UN assistance at the provincial level.
Mr. President,
The communiqué which was issued by senior ministers from more
than twenty countries after the high-level ad hoc meeting on Afghanistan
last Friday signaled the international community’s recognition
of the most serious challenge facing Afghanistan today – security.
President Karzai, the Secretary-General, along with almost everyone
in Afghanistan, have repeatedly called for the expansion of ISAF. This
has not been possible. As a result, people in Afghanistan as well as
in neighbouring countries are disappointed and concerned. But there
is now a growing realisation that the efforts of the Afghans in the
field of security need to be supported more directly and more effectively,
and I very much hope that focussed discussions will soon take place
on this issue in Kabul, with the participation of Afghan authorities,
the United Nations and key members of the international community. The
rationale behind the need for international cooperation in that regard
is simple: Afghanistan does not have a national army, it does not have
a national police, and it will take time to build both.
The Afghans themselves realize that they need to do better than they
have done so far in this regard. And a significant part of the work
of the government, in cooperation with the UN and other partners, must
concentrate in the weeks to come on these issues. Before the end of
the year, Afghanistan should have a credible and achievable agenda to
build a national army and a national police that will progressively
take over from the present factional and de facto forces up and down
the country. This requires demoblilizing many of the presently armed
elements and helping them to re-integrate into civilian society. It
also requires training and inducting new elements. And it requires reorganizing
and reforming the Ministry of Defence, the Ministry of Interior, and
the Intelligence Services.
Mr.
President,
The first two months of the Transitional Administration has seen a proliferation
of local conflicts and violence. The United Nations itself has been
the direct target of terrorist acts on three separate occasions these
past two months. Two of these attacks were reported in previous briefings
to the Council: the grenade thrown into the FAO compound in Kandahar
on 3 August, and the bomb placed against the wall of the UN guest house
in Kabul on 25 August. It is now UNICEF’s compound in Jalalabad
which was the target of a rocket attack just two days ago. In these
three incidents, a little Afghan girl was wounded in Kabul, and a security
guard also suffered injury in the recent attack in Jalalabad.
Only once in the past was the United Nations the target of violence
in Afghanistan, and that was when Colonel Callo, a military advisor
for UNSMA, was assassinated in Kabul. The United Nations is serving
the people of Afghanistan: it is feeding the hungry, providing clean
water to families, attending to the sick, helping kids go to school,
helping refugees and IDPs to return home. And it is working with all
Afghans to rebuild what has been destroyed by 23 years of conflict.
Afghans of all walks of life understand fully the importance of the
UN. That is why they spontaneously come after each incident to express
solidarity and sympathy and to condemn these acts which they consider
as directed at the people of Afghanistan as a whole.
These incidents are of concern, as is the continuing violence across
Afghanistan. While there have been recent sporadic localized clashes
in several parts of the country, the situation is now calmer compared
to previous weeks. Tensions had been particularly acute in the north
and the southeast, but within the last few days there have been positive
developments in these troublesome areas. The two main rival factions
in the north, Jamiat and Jumbesh, agreed to establish a joint force
to tackle violence and instability. The force would disarm all parties
involved in fomenting conflict. The long awaited demilitarization of
the main northern city of Mazar-i-Sharif started last week. All major
commanders present in Mazar have withdrawn outside the city boundaries
with their weapons and ammunition. Controls by the Police and members
of the Security Commission are ongoing, and have resulted in the disarmament
of small remaining detachments. The leaders of Jumbesh and Jamiat in
the area, Generals Dostum and Atta, announced that in the future there
would be no place for small commanders who fight for personal benefit.
In the southeast, Pacha Khan Zadran, who has been a thorn in the government’s
side, declaring his opposition to President Karzai and his government’s
appointed local representatives, was forced out of Khost when the local
governor launched an offensive that succeeded in removing Zadran’s
forces from the city. Several people died when the city was rocketed
by his retreating troops, but fighting subsided after three days, on
the 10th of September. The United Nations has now been able to resume
its operations in the area.
Mr.
President,
In the last briefing to the Security Council on Afghanistan, the question
of transitional justice was raised in relation to the publicity surrounding
the site of a mass grave in Dasht-e-Leily, near Shiberghan. I think
it is fairly certain that a large number of people died in, to say the
least, suspcious circumstances. Nonetheless, the leaders of the major
factions of the northern region have issued a statement jointly rejecting
Newsweek’s allegations that Taliban prisoners suffocated in containers
on their way to Shiberghan prison. They also expressed their willingness
to cooperate with any investigations, provided that they were carried
out by experts in an objective and impartial way. UNAMA’s human
rights team traveled to the north to seek further information from the
signatories of the statement. The Transitional Administration and the
Afghan Human Rights Commission have agreed that an investigation of
several sites, including one or more where the bodies were presumed
to be victims of the Taliban, should now take place. UNAMA has been
in touch with the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights to
ask for assistance in identifying the forensic teams needed to carry
out the task. Additional security will be needed from the Government,
local authorities, and the international community to help the investigators
carry out their work. A word of caution, however: it will probably be
possible to do the forensic part of the investigation. Whether and when
it will be possible to actually conclude the investigation is another
matter. Ensuring the security of potential witnesses as well as the
security of the investigating teams is, of course, of paramount importance
and, as things stand at the moment, by no means certain.
Mr.
President,
In face of the many difficulties that are strewn along the path to the
restoration of security and prosperity in Afghanistan, I have been advocating
that the international community should show neither panic nor complacency.
We have been very lucky in Kabul during the first six months of 2002.
None of the rocket attacks recorded between April and June caused any
casualties. The people of Afghanistan showed great patience and enthusiasm
throughout the Loya Jirga process in spite of uncertainty about security
and economic hardships. This may have bred complacency and a sense that
the peace process in Afghanistan could be achieved at low cost to the
international community. Let the close shave of the attempt on the life
of President Karzai, the tragedy of the car bombing in Kabul on the
5th of September and the expressions of frustration from ordinary Afghans
concerning recovery be a wakeup call for all of us, Afghans and internationals
alike. The oil tanker carrying explosives which was captured near Kabul
on the 14th of September reconfirms that there are people out there
who are intent on continuing the deadly cycle of violence. To borrow
from the statement of the Secretary-General after the assassination
attempt on President Karzai’s life and the car bombing, we trust
that these setbacks will only strengthen the resolve of the international
community and the legitimate Afghan authorities to bring security and
stability to Afghanistan.
We
owe a debt of gratitude to the international community for their sustained
interest and support for Afghanistan, but time is of the essence. In
the months after the anniversary of the September 11 attacks, and a
few weeks before the anniversary of the Bonn agreement, I hope that
the international community will turn its undoubted commitment to Afghanistan
into more forceful action.
New
York, 19 September 2002
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