Let U.N. Rebuild Afghanistan

Now that Northern Alliance has routed the Taliban from much of Afghanistan, the need to form a new government in the war-ravaged country has become urgent. Every day that the current power vacuum continues, regional warlords work to consolidate their power further and reduce the chances of a truly representative government taking the Taliban’s place. Although America’s armed forces continue to search for members of the al Qaeda network, we cannot wait until the military operations are over to begin working in the political sphere to establish a stable interim government to protect the Afghan people.

The entry of the Northern Alliance into Kabul makes it imperative that the United States and the United Nations expedite the work of forming a coalition government. In a sign of progress, a U.N. envoy said yesterday that several Afghan groups (including the Northern Alliance) had agreed to meet in Berlin this weekend to begin talks, and had signed on to the U.N.’s vision of broad-based, multiethnic rule. The Northern Alliance has agreed to cede control in Kabul to such an interim government, but it must also allow a multinational peacekeeping force to temporarily take over in Kabul while the U.N. talks are ongoing.

To take on a broader role in Afghanistan, the U.N. needs the strong support of America and the world. The U.S. has traditionally been reluctant to stand behind the U.N., preferring to focus on its failures. The need for an impartial international institution to manage this crisis is paramount. The road ahead for Afghanistan is rocky, filled with too many pitfalls for any one nation to traverse alone. The U.S. and the U.N. must effectively build a nation from scratch, as Afghanistan’s infrastructure and institutions have been decimated over its many decades of war.

The next government will have the opportunity to lift Afghanistan out of the strife and hopelessness that have been the defining features of its recent history. But for the U.S., the stakes are also high. Allowing Afghanistan to collapse once again raises the risk that dangerous movements and terrorist groups will again find a safe haven there.

Furthermore, the way America treats Afghanistan will be taken as an indication of the way we will treat other failed states in the future. If we abandon the country after locating Osama bin Laden and other leaders of al Qaeda, the world will assume that we have no other goal than our immediate self-interest. The U.S. must show that it is genuinely concerned about the fate of the Afghan people, and the only way to do that is to strongly support, in both word and deed, the U.N.’s efforts to rebuild Afghanistan.

To this end, Secretary of State Colin L. Powell recently suggested that peacekeepers in Afghanistan should come from majority-Muslim countries, to demonstrate that this is not a religious war and that America has no interest in colonizing the area. If nations like Bangladesh, Turkey and Indonesia would be willing to send significant peacekeeping contingents to Afghanistan, such an arrangement would be far preferable to a long-term American-only occupation.

America and the world face a challenge in Afghanistan. The U.N.’s attempts to establish a provisional government are essential, but they are only the first steps. If we leave without considering the future of the Afghan people, the tragedy that they have lived over the last several decades—and the tragedy that we have suffered in the last few months—will almost certainly be repeated.