The British government is to co-host an international summit in London at the end of the month to agree a five-year plan to speed up the reconstruction of Afghanistan and confront an upsurge in violence. The conference is to be chaired jointly by British Prime Minister Tony Blair; Hamid Karzai, the Afghan President; and Kofi Annan, the United Nations Secretary General. Condoleezza Rice, the United States Secretary of State, is also scheduled to attend.
In the face of criticism that Afghanistan has been forgotten by the international community, Annan told The Guardian: ”After all they have achieved in recent years, the Afghan people deserve to be reassured that [Afghanistan’s] special relationship with the international community will remain strong.
”The London conference is an excellent opportunity to send a signal to [the Afghans] that the outside world continues to share their goals as they build a democracy that respects the rights of all.”
The announcement of the conference came as a Taliban commander said hundreds of his guerrillas are ready to launch suicide attacks across Afghanistan to drive out foreign forces. Violence is at its highest level since the US-led invasion in 2001. On Monday, a suicide attack killed 23 at Spin Boldak.
The British government is planning to send in more than 3 000 extra troops this spring, a deployment that will pit them directly against the Taliban, drug traffickers and elements of al-Qaeda in the south, the most anarchic and dangerous part of the country.
The conference, dubbed Bonn Two, is a follow-up to a summit in the former German capital in December 2001 at which Afghans and the international community agreed a timetable for establishing democracy. The opening of the Afghan National Assembly in December after elections marked a formal end to the Bonn process, and Annan and Karzai want to embark on a new phase.
After briefing the Security Council on Tuesday, Jean Arnault, head of the UN’s Afghanistan programme, said recent violence has ”served as a sad reminder of the magnitude of the outstanding tasks in the consolidation of peace in Afghanistan”.
The Afghan government and its international supporters have almost completed a ”compact for Afghanistan” to be launched at the conference. Annan expressed hope that it will provide ”a comprehensive and strong blueprint for what will be, in the next five years, an intensive exercise in peace building”.
The conference will set out benchmarks and a timetable for security, good government, human rights, rule of law, development and combating drug trafficking. It is to be held at Lancaster House, site of many big international conferences, on January 31 and February 1.
John Bolton, the US ambassador to the UN, said the US, along with others, will be making a ”major pledge in support of Afghan development” at the conference.
The UN said there have been 19 suicide attacks in the past 12 months, 13 of them in the past 10 weeks.
The US, struggling with troop rotation in Iraq, is hoping to cut its troop strength in Afghanistan from 18 000 to 16 500 in the next few months. Members of Nato, who have a peacekeeping force of almost 10 000, are due to increase their numbers to 15 000 and take over responsibilities from US forces in the south. Although the British have committed troops, promises from countries such as The Netherlands have run into domestic political problems.
The threat of more suicide bombers was delivered by Mullah Dadullah, a Taliban commander, speaking by satellite phone and reported by Reuters news agency. He said: ”An increase in the number of foreign forces in Afghanistan will make it easier to attack and inflict losses on them.”
He added: ”Hundreds of Afghan Taliban mujahedin are ready for suicide attacks. They only await orders from the Taliban leadership.”
The Afghan government said the insurgents appear to be trying to frighten Nato members dithering over whether to join the expanded force. The Afghan suicide bombers seem to have been inspired by the success of Iraqi suicide bombers. The fighting has been fiercest along the border with Pakistan, where US forces have been battling remnants of the Taliban and continuing their hunt for al-Qaeda, whose leaders they believe are hiding in tribal areas along Pakistan’s border.
The US launched an air strike on Friday aimed at the al-Qaeda number two, Ayman al-Zawahri, an Egyptian, but killed 18 villagers. Pakistani intelligence sources on Wednesday said three of four al-Qaeda members believed to have been killed included al-Zawahri’s son-in-law, Abdul Rehman al-Misri al-Maghribi. Another was Midhat Murfi al-Sayid Omer, an explosives expert who carried a $5-million US reward on his head. The third man named was Abu Obaidah al-Misri, al-Qaeda’s chief of operations in Afghanistan’s eastern Kunar province. — Guardian Unlimited Â