France calls for new approach to Afghan aid

PARIS - French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner on Saturday called for a new approach to rebuilding Afghanistan, saying aid efforts since the fall of the Taliban had failed to yield enough results.
Opening a conference of some 40 non-governmental organisations, Kouchner said Afghans themselves must play a larger role in the development of their country where US and NATO troops are still fighting a Taliban insurgency in the south.
"International aid has not fully yielded fruit since 2001," when US forces and their allies drove the Taliban out of Kabul, Kouchner said.
"We must review our tools and our approach."
A trained doctor who worked in Afghanistan during the 1980s, Kouchner called for an "Afghanization of international aid to involve all Afghans and ensure it benefits every one of them."
French officials said "Afghanizing" international aid could entail giving more direct support to development programmes run by the Afghan government.
Currently, only 20 percent of the financial aid is managed by Kabul with the remainder spent by donors themselves, according to Afghan deputy national security advisor Homayoun Tandar.
"International aid must be delivered and coordinated through the government in order to have greater impact," Afghan Rural Development Minister Ehsan Zia told delegates at the one-day conference.
"The government of Afghanistan is ready to account for every dollar."
The conference in Paris set the stage for an international donors' meeting that France is hosting next month, the third such fundraising drive organised by the international community for Afghanistan in recent years.
With nearly half of the promised aid still to reach Kabul, the Afghan government is hoping to secure 50 billion dollars (31.7 billion euros) in pledges at the June 12 conference to finance a five-year development plan.
Only 15 billion dollars out of the 25 billion dollars promised in aid have been released, according to a report by ACBAR, the Agency Coordinating Body for Afghan Relief made up of 94 organisations.
And about 40 percent of that amount returns to donor nations to cover consultant fees and projects carried out by various private contractors, according to the report released in March.
Seven years after the fall of the Taliban, much of Afghanistan's population, in particular outside Kabul, remains desperately poor and aid groups complain of too much focus being placed on the military effort.
NATO has deployed a 47,000-strong force drawn from 40 countries which is fighting a Taliban insurgency alongside some 20,000 US troops and supporting the weak central government of President Hamid Karzai.