A "Massive Challenge" in Afghanistan

A land of war and poverty has become a land of numbers.

More than 3.5 million Afghan refugees are trying to return home. Approximately $600 million is needed in economic assistance in the next six months alone, and billions have already been pledged by the international community.

The numbers are almost unfathomable, but since Wednesday, members of international aid organizations, the United Nations and the European Union have been trying to get a grip on them. Just a few hours after the various Afghan delegations agreed on the conditions of a new government in Kabul on Wednesday, aid organizers opened a meeting in Berlin focused on economic and humanitarian aid for that new government.

"The international community is massively challenged," said German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer, in a speech opening the conference at the Foreign Ministry Wednesday.

War breeds humanitarian crisis

For the past two decades Afghanistan has known only war and poverty. Fighting between the Soviet Union and Western-sponsored Afghan Muslim holy warriors in the 1980s and the internal struggle for supremacy that brought the Taliban to power in the late 1990s, have left behind a land in desperate need of recovery.

More than 3.5 million refugees fled Afghanistan in the past two decades, making up the largest refugee group on earth, the United Nations Refugee Commissioner Ruud Luber told conference participants on Wednesday. Now, those refugees are needed to rebuild the country.

"Refugees and displaced people make up almost one fifth of the Afghan population and their potential contribution to society shouldn't be underestimated," Lubers said. "These people are not only humanitarian aid recipients, they can also make important contributions to the evolution," of Afghanistan.

Making it safe

The burden now lies on the international community to ensure the security of Afghanistan so that the refugees can return home, Luber said. A UN spokesman said the Security Council would try and decide in the coming weeks on whether to deploy an international peacekeeping mission in Afghanistan.

The United States has urged the UN to delay any decision on a peacekeeping mission until the Taliban is completely removed from power and the land achieves the security still missing. On Thursday, the international organization Doctors Without Borders announced that it was pulling staff from its Jalalabad office because of the anti-Western feelings US air strikes had created.

Eager to start

But donors are eager to start. The Red Cross announced it wanted to focus on the medical care of Afghans, in particular those injured by land mines and those living in rural provinces.

The German government, which has already pledged more than $45 million for the year 2001, said it wants more than $500,000 of that number to go towards the medical care of Afghan women.

But still more is needed. Kenzo Oshima, UN representative for humanitarian aid, said that $600 million in humanitarian aid is necessary in the next six months alone.

Members of the 15-nation Afghanistan Support Group, who are attending the Berlin conference, agreed at the beginning of October to provide more than $590 million to the rebuilding effort. The group includes the USA, Norway, Russia, the Netherlands, Switzerland, Finland, France, Italy, Japan, Sweden, the U.K., Canada, Denmark and Australia.

German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer told donors they need to do everything possible, "so that the people of Afghanistan can make it through what is hopefully the final stretch."