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Contributions from
the Column
Facts and trends
Water: Multi-stakeholder dialogue does not take off
World Bank: Wolfowitz to succeed Wolfensohn
Donors delay aid for Sudan
Afghanistan: Still torn apart
EU parliament opposed to sugar reform
Indicators for more effective aid
Honour killings – an underestimated crime
Supachai Panitchpakdi to head UNCTAD?
IDA 14: More money for the poorest countries
Somalia: Government is looking for a residence
Haiti: Hopelessness
04/2005
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[ Afghanistan ]
Still torn apart after the war
A good three years after the fall of the Taliban, the future of Afghanistan still hangs in the balance, concludes a report on the human development in the country, presented by the UN Development Programme (UNDP) in late February. Much has been achieved since the first Loya Jirga in Bonn in December 2001, but Afghanistan still ranks right at the bottom of the UN index for human development. The report “draws a portrait of a nation still at odds – if no longer at war – with itself”.
According to the UNDP, the Afghan economy has picked up enormously since 2002. Nonetheless, poverty and inequality are still rife. The report maintains that the majority of Afghans fear they are missing out on the benefits of reconstruction. In terms of government policy and international aid, the rural population is not getting a fair share, the report states.
In the field of education, the good news is that the numbers of children in primary school and of high school students have increased significantly. At the same time, there are also great imbalances. In some provinces, not even 20 percent of the girls go to school. Nationwide, fewer than 30 percent of adults can read and write. According to the report, Afghanistan “has the worst education system in the world”.
From the authors’ point of view, one of the biggest hurdles for stability in Afghanistan is the opium industry. In this respect, the report can offer no more than hope. After the record opium harvest last year, production may have peaked. According to figures that Mohammad Daud, the country’s deputy home minister, presented at a UN conference in early March in Vienna, opium production increased by 64 percent in 2004 and spread over 131,000 hectares. Last year, the income from the drug economy equalled 60 percent of legal GDP.
The executive director of the UN Office on Drugs and Crime, Antonio Maria Costa, reported that the Afghan drug industry is making great progress in the production of heroin. Today, 80 percent of the opium is refined in the country, he said. Ten years ago, the share was just 20 percent. Costa expressed the fear that the ten most powerful drug lords in Afghanistan could join forces in a Colombian-style cartel.
Meanwhile, the suspicion has arisen that the USA and Britain have sprayed poppy fields with pesticides without approval of the Afghan government. According to the New York Times, farmers in several provinces had reported dead animals as well as the destruction of wheat and opium crops. The newspaper maintains that Afghan and foreign officials found granules in the fields, which were sent abroad for analysis by two Western embassies. President Hamid Karzai condemned the spraying of the fields and called in the ambassadors of both suspected countries for an explanation. According to the New York Times, the US government asked Congress for 152 million dollars to spray opium fields in December. In January, it withdrew the request after Karzai had made his opposition clear. (ell)
On the Internet:
The UNDP report: http://www.undp.org.af/nhdr_download.htm
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