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Rebuilding Afghanistan

By JASON MOLL, for United Press International

WASHINGTON, Jan. 18 (UPI) -- The bombing has stopped, the Taliban and al Qaida terrorists are on the run, and there is a western-friendly interim government in Kabul.

Now comes the hard part, say reports from two of the nation's leading think tanks: rebuilding Afghanistan.

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The United States and other countries must reconstruct Afghanistan, distribute humanitarian aid and keep the peace, say the reports, one from the progressive Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and the other from centrist Brookings Institution.

The international community must not abandon Afghanistan, as it did after the Soviet army withdrew in 1989. Otherwise, the think tanks say, there is a real danger that the country again could become a sanctuary for terrorists.

Experts at both Carnegie and Brookings also say that the most effective way to distribute the desperately needed humanitarian aid is through regional leaders and warlords -- many of the same people responsible for war there in the past.

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If aid is distributed through the central government in Kabul before it becomes established, then corrupt politicians may decide to distribute the aid to select areas or groups, writes Michael O'Hanlon, senior fellow at Brookings, in "The Aid and Reconstruction Agenda for Afghanistan."

Large amounts of aid concentrated in the capital could provoke future conflict by making the city a target for those seeking material gain.

"The competition for spoils could lead to a lethal type of political competition in Kabul among and between different groups of resistance forces," he says.

Distributing aid on the regional level could prompt local leaders to be more equitable when delivering it, in addition to persuading them to adopt international standards and practices, O'Hanlon says.

"All (local leaders) would receive some aid for feeding and housing their people, clearing land mines, and rebuilding roads," he says. "But only those that avoided major corruption and massive human rights abuses, while also following sound economic practices, would receive generous aid packages for broader development and reconstruction purposes."

The problem with avoiding Kabul in the aid process, however, is that it seriously undercuts the credibility of the new government, says O'Hanlon.

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The status of the Kabul government is unimportant at this point, contend Carnegie senior associates Marina Ottaway and Anatol Lieven, because any semblance of democracy will be extremely difficult in a place where tribal, ethnic, and local affiliations take precedence over feelings of nationalism.

"The international community's immediate aim for the Afghan government should therefore not be the impossible fantasy of a democratic government technocratically administering the country, but rather the formation of a loose national mediation committee functioning not just for the initial six months but indefinitely," Ottaway and Lieven write in "Rebuilding Afghanistan: Fantasy versus Reality."

The international community should be deliberate in not avoiding Kabul too much, because that would only deepen the control warlords have over regions and population centers, according to Teresita Schaffer, director of the South Asia Program at the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies.

"You don't necessarily want to build up the warlords as warlords because one of the objectives of the national government when it is strong enough is that it can maintain security on the roads and thus be a counterweight of the natural tendency of the warlords to rob the people who come through the roads and fight with one another," Schaffer says. "Those are the things that need to be resisted and the force that eventually ought to be able to resist those is the national government. But that is not going to happen right away."

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Allowed enough time, Schaffer says there is a much better, historical political system waiting to inherit the interim political structure in Kabul.

"I think that Afghanistan has had a kind of democracy in the past but it's not something you would recognize as being similar to the political system you grew up with," she says. "The device of a Loya Jirga, which is a grand council of tribal leaders, is in its own way a rather democratic process because all of the tribal leaders get to speak up.

"I think democracy is possible in Afghanistan, but I also think democracy is a work in progress, always, so that you can't ever say that you have completely gotten there and it is beyond threat. I wouldn't even say that in the United States," Schaffer says.

In order to bring about an environment in which peace is possible and aid can be distributed, Afghanistan will need more peacekeepers, especially outside of the current limit of Kabul, says Robert Hathaway, director of the Asia program at The Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington, D.C.

"We need to work with our friends around the world to help stabilize the security situation so that it's possible to drive from Kabul to Kandahar, or it will be possible to disburse international aid to some of the remote villages in the country," Hathaway says. "If it takes a larger peacekeeping force, then so be it. None of us relish a large peacekeeping operation in Afghanistan for an extended period of time, but if you conclude that the alternatives are even worse, sometimes you have to bite the bullet."

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Hathaway concedes that such an operation is nation-building, but he says it is warranted in this instance, even though many Americans decry the failures of establishing democracy in countries like Somalia and Haiti.

"I know the president and others have said 'We're not into nation building,' but that's a rather foolish statement," Hathaway says. "I think that we are into nation building and we should be. Not because we're fuzzy-head idealists, but because this is the best way to promote some very concrete U.S. interests, including the interest we have in trying to create a stable, reasonably prosperous, over time, Afghanistan because the alternative is too horrendous to contemplate."

Maintaining security and stability, however, goes beyond the current boundaries of Afghanistan because many of that country's neighbors share deep ethnic and tribal ties that extend across map lines. In "Preventing New Afghanistans: A Regional Strategy for Reconstruction," Martha Brill Olcott, senior associate at Carnegie, says the international community should help prevent the country's Central Asian neighbors from becoming destabilized.

The time is opportune to distribute aid and engage the former Soviet republics of Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan, Olcott says, otherwise the situation will simply deteriorate and other nations may succumb to the same problems Afghanistan has over the last several years.

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"Unless the international community pursues an aggressive strategy for regional development, new bin Ladens will emerge to take his place and Afghanistan-like states will proliferate," Olcott says.

Assistance would constitute economic aid, but it also could induce countries to clamp down on arms and heroin smuggling. Smugglers of both products often work in concert, Olcott says, with the proceeds supporting radical Islamic insurgencies.

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