Good governance must be introduced globally

Abstract

Editor-After 23 years of war and three years of drought Afghanistan has been driven into sweeping devastation and poverty. Having spent two weeks in Afghanistan on behalf of the US Physicians for Human Rights, as a member of a three person team, I can say that unless the international community moves rapidly to extend a security network outside Kabul and to mobilise funds for short term projects, the military and political investment in the coalition war will have been for naught.Curfews imposed since the time of the Russians close down the cities at 10 pm, but the United Nations keeps its staff in after nightfall, even in Kabul. At least Kabul can point to the international security force, albeit thinly deployed. Elsewhere, the only restraint is the presence of coalition forces at the airports or in temporary bivouacs, and these troops are poised to leave at any time.Mazaar-I-Sharif, the main city of the north, is divided into three distinct sections under the direction of three rival warlords. Virtually every male aged 14 to 60 in this city carries a Kalashnikov rifle. To venture out after nightfall is to contend with packs of howling dogs and encounters with wayward armed men, possibly allied with a warlord, possibly simple bandits. Incidents of assault and robbery are increasing daily in every urban area. Checkpoints have sprung up along the roads leading out from every city and town in the north, and it is unclear, as you approach, what will be exacted in order to pass. Everyone we spoke to is afraid of a return to the murderous times of the 1992-6 civil wars.The relief that people have expressed in watching the Taliban flee is fading quickly into fear of what may happen if the warlords are allowed free rein. In a country where people have seen nothing but conflict they plead first for a neutral and professional external force to help stabilise their early and fragile peace.They then plead for an urgent infusion of relief aid and the start of practical visible reconstruction projects. Currently in Kabul there is electricity for a few hours every other day. The northern city of Mazaar also occasionally has electricity. Generators are few; fuel expensive. Food is present in the markets, but the prices are high. Cooking and heating rely on thin metal stoves, stoked with diesel burners or gnarled thick wood from the dead grapevines and orchards of the once verdant fields and plains. There is no running water in these cities. There is also no police force, sanitation service, refuse collection, or postal service.Entire commercial and residential sections of Kabul stand like ancient ruins, the result of murderous cross bombardment in the days of the Mujahadeen. Similar swathes of destruction mar extensive areas of Mazaar, where the Taliban assaulted neighbourhoods, slaughtered civilians, and bulldozed every structure.In these cities the parks are dust, the remaining trees barely standing with the lack of rain. Very limited access to the villages and hamlets that lie days off the main roads (and these roads themse...