Despite its pledge the West walks away again from Afghans' plight

Jonathan Steele, Guardian News Service, London

In the heady days after the Taliban fell, western politicians developed a ready refrain. "This time we will not walk away," they promised. By that they meant no repetition of what happened when the western-supported mojahedin forces gained control of the country a decade earlier. Foreign governments sent up a great cheer, but when the mojahedin factions fell out and destroyed Kabul in an orgy of artillery shelling, rape and murder, they turned a blind eye.

It was an experience that Mohammed Latif will never forget. The other day he stood outside his war-damaged home watching across the street as delegates arrived from all over Afghanistan for the loya jirga or grand tribal council which was to confirm Afghanistan's new government in office.

Huge shell holes were still visible on the two-story facade of his house, now partly filled by bricks. Plastic sheeting covered the gaps where window panes once glinted in the summer sun. He pointed up the hill to the Intercontinental Hotel (where most of the loya jirga press corps was staying), and described how the forces of the main Tajik mojahedin commander, Ahmed Shah Massoud, had fired down from the ridge on to his neighborhood.

He certainly did not want the west to walk away this time. Yet, as the loya jirga ended, it was hard to be optimistic. Admittedly there had been unprecedentedly open debate. At least half of the delegates were chosen in elections which were reasonably free.

When it came to sharing jobs in President Hamid Karzai's new government a balance was struck between the country's main ethnic groups, the Tajiks and the Pashtun. But on the major issue of whether Afghanistan will be run by educated people with a vision of democratic development the loya jirga was a disaster. The struggle between the modernizers and the mojahedin was won decisively by the latter.

Leaders responsible for the mayhem of the early 1990s hogged the microphones to boast of their role in the resistance to Soviet occupation but ignored the more recent destruction they caused or the fact that ordinary Afghans despise them as reactionary warlords. They forced their fundamentalist views of Islam on to the assembly, demanding -- and getting from Karzai -- the right to call the government "Islamic". A chief justice was appointed who believes in a strict interpretation of sharia law. The minister for women's affairs was denounced as "Afghanistan's Salman Rushdie".

The loya jirga also failed to enhance the power of the central government and extend it over the provinces. The thugs who run the key cities of Herat and Mazar-i-Sharif rejected offers to join Karzai's government in Kabul, preferring to stay in monopoly control of their regional fiefdoms.

How much western governments could do to stop these internal processes can be debated. But by refusing to send peacekeepers out of Kabul to help Karzai disarm the warlords the west is already beginning to "walk away". By declining to make aid for regional government projects conditional on human rights progress it is doing the same. Indeed it is not even providing all the aid it promised, with or without strings attached.

The World Food Program estimates that more than half of all Afghan families are in need of emergency supplies, but it has received only 57 per cent of the food it asked for from foreign donors. Afghan refugees in Pakistan have been coming home in far higher numbers than the United Nations anticipated.

Their mass return is not purely a sign of confidence in the "new" Afghanistan. Many of the new arrivals lived in Pakistani cities rather than refugee camps, and complain that government- ordered police harassment is forcing them out.

Whatever the reasons for their return, they come back to a country where their homes are destroyed and their livestock is no more. Yet the UN refugee agency had to cut food rations to the returnees by two-thirds last month, and is warning it may have to end all handouts if foreign governments do not deliver the cash they promised in January.

Removing the Taliban was not the primary purpose of the US air strikes on Afghanistan last autumn. "Regime change" became a war aim relatively late in the day. The main goals were to capture Osama bin Laden and eliminate or at least reduce the danger of further al-Qaeda attacks on the United States.

The hunt for al-Qaeda inside Afghanistan has clearly failed, as Britain's decision to pull its marines out next month demonstrates. Neither Bin Laden nor his main lieutenants have been found. As for al-Qaeda's potential for future acts of terror, the Bush administration now admits the threat is greater than it was before the U.S. bombing.

The New York Times last week reported senior officials as saying that a group of mid-level operatives have taken over from Bin Laden and have forged links with extremists in several Islamic countries. "This new alliance, though loosely knit, is as fully capable of planning and carrying out potent attacks on American targets as the more centralized network once led by Osama bin Laden. Classified investigations of the Qaeda threat now under way at the FBI and CIA have concluded that the war in Afghanistan failed to diminish the threat to the U.S., the officials said. Instead, the war might have complicated counterterrorism efforts by dispersing potential attackers across a wider geographic area."

This analysis leaves Afghanistan's internal future as the only area where the U.S. can claim success from its decision to respond to Sept. 11 with military force. Forget the civilians killed by bombs and those who died of hunger during the disruption of aid supplies. Ignore the dangerous precedent of accepting the right to overthrow a government, however brutal, by bombing a country from the air.

The test of the operation depends on whether the collateral benefit of the bombing campaign, the fall of the Taliban, outweighs the costs. In the euphoria of the Taliban's collapse last December many people felt it did. Can they feel so sure six months down the line?

There is still an atmosphere of hope and expectation in Kabul. The benighted repression of the Taliban is over. Women are able to lead normal public lives, and at the loya jirga, in spite of efforts at intimidation, many spoke out against the warlords with more courage than the men.

But signs of regression are already emerging. Many delegates were concerned that when they left the spotlight of publicity and returned to the provinces they could be targeted. The west is starting to walk away and Afghanistan is not walking forward as firmly as it seemed half a year ago.