Berlin conference could yield up to US $9 billion

Afghan officials met donors and international organisations in Berlin on Wednesday and Thursday in a landmark attempt to boost Afghanistan's fragile reconstruction effort. Improving security ahead of elections and clamping down on the burgeoning opium trade are also top priorities for the high-profile meeting. On the first day of the gathering, officials from participating countries and organisations estimated new aid and reconstruction pledges to be at least US $4 billion. But German Overseas Development Minister Heidemarie Wieczorek-Zeul said Kabul could receive pledges up to $9 billion spread over three years. Afghan Finance Minister Ashraf Ghani, who is also in Berlin, has said, however that previous pledges "vastly underestimated" Afghanistan's needs. The conference is the most significant gathering of its kind since the Tokyo donors summit in January 2002. "For Afghanistan, it is important to retain donor involvement as it recovers from two decades of war at this particular time when the world pays more attention to Iraq. Most importantly, the Tokyo pledges are going to dry up and the bulk of reconstruction work remained untouched," Abdul Rauf Zia, external relations officer for the World Bank Afghanistan, told IRIN from Kabul. According to the British Agencies Afghanistan Group (BAAG), one the NGOs participating in the donor meeting, the conference was critical in bringing the country back into the international spotlight, following world attention elsewhere in the past 12 months. "The conference is important in providing a forum for the main donors to focus on Afghanistan after the intervention in Iraq. It is also relevant that Kofi Annan, Jack Straw and other significant personalities are coming together to discuss Afghanistan," Peter Marsden, coordinator for the BAAG, told IRIN from London. Afghan president Hamid Karzai spoke at the meeting - co-chaired by the UN, Afghanistan, Germany and Japan - of a vision that within a decade, Afghanistan "will no longer be a burden on the shoulders of the world." He warned, however, that there was virtually no prospect of his building a "safer and better" country unless the international community found $27 billion for its reconstruction. Marsden pointed out that the amount of donor money allocated to Afghanistan per capita had been much less than other emergencies like Iraq and the Balkans conflict. But he warned that some of the expectations from Afghan officials were perhaps too optimistic. Observers have noted that Western governments and other big donors like the Japanese were unable to make the kind of long term commmitment Kabul seeks. Despite not getting the donor pledges it had hoped for, the Afghan government reacted favourably to events in Berlin. " We had asked for $10 billion for the next three years and what has been pledged so far is $7 billion in the next three years, which is not too far from what the government had asked for," Abdul Hamid Mubarez Afghan deputy information minister, told IRIN from Kabul. On Thursday, discussion centred around enhancing security - most regions outside Kabul remain beyond president Hamid Karzai's control. Many representatives at the meeting are in favour of expansion of the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF), which is currently limited to the capital. A wider ISAF mission - that would enhance security before and during September's rescheduled elections - has been approved by the United Nations. But NATO has so far been unable to find the thousands of extra troops required to bring security to the country's lawless provinces. Japan's envoy, Sadako Ogata, urged the international community to provide the troops ISAF needs to ensure that the elections were fair, that private militias were disarmed and that aid can reach those who need it most. She said Tokyo would take the lead in the disarmament and demobilisation of some 100,000 private militia soldiers loyal to various warlords and tribal chiefs around the country.