JP/6/OTHER3

Saving Afghanistan

To rebuild Afghanistan after 23 years of war and oppression, wealthy countries and international lending agencies pledged last January to provide US$4.5 billion in reconstruction funds over five years, with $1.8 billion of that to be delivered this year. Yet barely a third of the first-year pledge has been met, raising the risk that the country could fall back into chaos, internal warfare and, conceivably, renewed terrorist activity.

To its credit, the Bush administration has kept its part of the bargain, delivering $300 million in nonmilitary aid. Until now most outside money has been spent on emergency relief, including food and medicine for a population of returning refugees that has proved to be larger than anyone expected.

There also is a serious security problem outside Kabul, the capital, in part because foreign governments, including Washington, have balked at expanding protection beyond Kabul. Moreover, the money for road-building still must be delivered, along with funds to pay salaries for an Afghan bureaucracy, 80 percent of whose budget is financed by outside aid.

First and foremost, governments that pledged billions to rebuild Afghanistan but that now hesitate out of fear that the money will be misused ought to reflect on the self-fulfilling prophecy that suggests. The alternative to strong, early action to make Afghanistan a viable state could be far worse and would undermine the reasons America and others fought a war to rid Afghanistan of the oppressive Taliban regime.

--The Sacramento Bee, California