Current efforts in Afghanistan are not enough, leaders say (Roundup)

Feb 8, 2009, 11:04 GMT

Munich - International efforts to stabilize Afghanistan are not enough and will have to be boosted and coordinated, NATO and Afghan leaders said at a top security debate on Sunday.

'Have we achieved security for our country, the defeat of terrorism and a return of life to normal expectations? No, we have not,' Afghan President Hamid Karzai told the prestigious Munich Security Conference.

Aid, military and reconstruction efforts from around the world have been poorly coordinated and have failed to deliver, he said.

'Is something lacking? Yes, something is lacking: better coordination in the international community is lacking. In spite of all our efforts, it is not coming about,' he said.

International troops have been present in Afghanistan under the UN-mandated International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) since 2002, and NATO has been leading the operation since 2003.

But the alliance is under increasing pressure from a resurgent Taliban, and is struggling to control the drugs trade which is funding the militants' efforts.

'If we had thought in 2001 that in seven-and-a-half years we'd still be worried, we would have thought it too pessimistic,' Poland's foreign minister and former defence minister Radek Sikorksi said.

In 2008, militant attacks increased by some 40 per cent over 2007, and the Taliban either controlled or were able to penetrate up to 70 per cent of the country, he pointed out.

And while speakers in the debate agreed that the international community had achieved progress on issues such as education and health care in the country, they all said that much more would have to be done to defeat the Taliban and rebuild Afghanistan.

In international efforts to fight the drugs trade, demobilize, disarm and reintegrate former fighters and boost the rule of law, 'two out of five were adequately done, the others lag, and we're paying the price now,' US National Security Advisor James Jones - a former supreme commander of NATO - told the conference.

Speakers including German Defence Minister Franz-Josef Jung and Pakistan's Foreign Minister Makhdoom Qureshi called on the West to work far more closely with Pakistan, Iran and India in order to crack down on terrorist safe havens outside Afghanistan.

'Do we have trust in the region for the project? No, we do not,' Karzai said. However, the governments of Afghanistan and Pakistan are cooperating much more effectively now than in recent years, he said.

Jung also urged the West to do more to support the Afghan army and police, saying that his government was to treble the number of training teams it has in the country and more than double the amount of reconstruction aid to 170 million euros (220 million dollars).

But British Defence Minister John Hutton, whose country has the second-highest number of troops in ISAF with almost 9,000 men, urged NATO to develop a 'wartime mentality' and commit more resources to fighting the Taliban and rebuilding Afghanistan.

The question is 'whether we believe we have assembled the right resources to deliver - and my view is that we don't. We need stronger force levels ... better governance and the collective will to make that happen,' he said.

US General David Petraeus, who was responsible for some of the US' early successes in stabilizing Iraq, said that 'sustained progress will require sustained commitment ... We all need to summon the will and the resources necessary.'

And Karzai said that military and civilian efforts would have to be matched by reconciliation with former Taliban fighters.

Afghanistan needs 'a process of reconciliation,' he said, inviting 'all those Taliban who are not part of al-Qaeda, who are not part of terrorism networks, who want to live by the constitution, have peace in the country, and live a normal life' to join the process.

And while he admitted that his country still had much work to do in fighting corruption and the drugs trade, he fiercely rejected any description of Afghanistan as a 'narcotics state.'

'Afghanistan is a poppy-producing country, not a narcotics country. Narcotics, heroin and other products are dealt by others: we get, unfortunately, the bad name,' he said.