Afghan conference one small step

By Andrew North
BBC correspondent at London's Afghan conference

Afghan ministers were encouraged by the turnout of donors

War-ravaged Afghanistan seems a world away from the plush, high-ceilinged rooms of Lancaster House in central London, where the conference on rebuilding the country has been taking place.

Nearby, in one of the richest parts of one of the richest cities in the world, high-priced European cars drive past shops selling shoes at £140 ($250) a pair. That is more than most Afghans earn in a year.

And why, some people watching the various delegations arriving asked, are countries like Brazil sending officials here?

Yet what is happening in this magnificent building a stone's throw from Buckingham Palace is crucial to Afghanistan's future.

Afghanistan is now a nascent democracy. Yet our optimism is necessarily tempered by the serious challenges the country is facing Kofi Annan, UN Secretary General Poverty haunts security quest

Not just because of new aid pledges, but because it is putting Afghanistan back into the limelight and reminding everyone that despite some progress, the job of getting the country back on its feet is still a long way from finished.

And with the signing of a five-year "Afghanistan Compact", it commits both sides - the Afghan government and its outside backers - to key benchmarks of progress in key areas such as security, economic development and better government.

Poverty

There has been a tendency among some in the international community to believe that because Afghanistan now has an elected president and parliament, things are on track.

It is true that that political success does mark the conclusion of the first stage of international efforts to rebuild the country, under the terms of the Bonn agreement that was signed soon after the fall of the Taleban in 2001.

Many of the improvements have by-passed ordinary Afghans

But UN Secretary General Kofi Annan, who is attending this meeting, perhaps summed up the mood best.

"Afghanistan is now a nascent democracy," he said. "Yet our optimism is necessarily tempered by the serious challenges the country is facing."

He focused on security, the threat from terrorism, the still rampant drugs trade, which he said meant Afghanistan was still in a "fragile state".

His words were notably more cautious than those of US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, who said it was "remarkable" what had been achieved in the past few years.

The real problem is that so few Afghans have felt much benefit from the political changes of the past few years. Most live in abject poverty. They have a government, but it does not have much capacity to do anything for them.

What the various Afghan ministers attending the conference along with President Hamid Karzai are saying is that more needs to be done now to strengthen this new government.

And that means the international community trusting Afghan government bodies with more of the aid money, rather than as now giving it to international organisations like the UN and to aid agencies.

Co-ordination plea

It is something Hanif Atmar, the Afghan rural development minister, has been emphasising in the lead up to the conference.

And he said he believed the message was getting through to the country's donors. "They realise this issue is important."

Great strides have been made but threats remain, says Hamid Karzai

But this new agreement also calls for much more effort by the Afghan side in dealing with corruption.

Shukria Barakzai, one of 68 women in the new Afghan parliament, said there also needed to be much better coordination in the use of aid in the future.

UK Prime Minister Tony Blair focused on the risks of failure in Afghanistan - reminding everyone that it was the 11 September 2001 attacks that brought the international community back to the country, after the world had abandoned it and allowed it to collapse into civil war following the Soviet withdrawal in 1989.

But many of the Afghan officials emerging from the meetings said they were encouraged simply by the turnout.

"It's good to see how many nations are involved here," one ministerial adviser told me.

"This morning, we were listening to the Brazilian foreign minister offering more help," he said. "He told us he didn't have as much money as the big Western countries, but it is very heartening when you hear that."

And some of those big Western countries did make new pledges - Ms Rice said President George W Bush was seeking congressional approval for $1.1bn in aid for Afghanistan next year, while the UK promised £455m over the next three years.

One question, though, that no-one wants to answer here, is when Afghanistan will be able to survive without this kind of support.