Q&A WITH LAKHDAR BRAHIMI

The UN's Special Representative for Afghanistan, Lakhdar Brahimi, spoke to Ahmed Rashid about the results of his six days of talks in Islamabad. [See Eurasia Insight for more information.] The text of his comments follow:

"The events of September 11 and what has happened since have made people understand that even a small, distant and far away country like Afghanistan cannot be left to break up into anarchy and chaos without consequences for the whole world. People now realize that globalization is not only for the multi-nationals and the circulation of money. Globalization is also playing a role helping drugs trafficking and terrorism which now circulate in a global network. Afghanistan deserves to be helped out of its civil war and misery - this is where lies the hope - that the time may have come for the problems here to be resolved.

"We are working on three levels or agendas. The first is the humanitarian. Several million people inside and outside Afghanistan are destitute and desperately in need of help. The international community is now more generous than ever and in spite of all the difficulties, UN agencies are doing the best job possible to provide shelter, food and medicine. There is a story which is not being told strongly enough of the Afghan employees of the UN inside the country who are saving hundreds of thousands of lives everyday by their bravery and nobody talks of them. We call them up and say stay at home if the situation in your town is becoming too dangerous, but they are always at work.

"Second is the political agenda. For the past ten years the UN has been trying to help the Afghans end their wars against one another, but we have been unsuccessful. Let's not go into why that has happened. However, it does seem now that the international community, more importantly the powers that have influence, and, even more importantly, Afghanistan's neighbors realize that it is high time that they work together, and not against one another. It also seems that the Afghans themselves want to avail themselves of this opportunity and all recognize that the UN is uniquely qualified to help bring them together. There are various processes and concerns out there and this is what I am discussing with the Afghans and the neighbors.

"The third point is that for some time the UN has been talking about helping Afghanistan in the reconstruction of the country but there has never been any real commitment by the international community to provide resources for that. Now that commitment is openly proclaimed by important states - Japan, the EU, the USA and Saudi Arabia. There is a firm, clear commitment to provide resources and ideas to enable us to organize the Afghans towards starting the process of rehabilitation and reconstruction. That is why Secretary General Kofi Annan asked James Wolfenson, head of the World Bank, to release Ashraf Ghani, a prominent Afghan working for the World Bank, so that he could come to work for us. I hope and presume that this will be the case for more Afghans."

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Posted November 1, 2001 © Eurasianet
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