AFGHANISTAN AT THE CROSSROADS
Afghanistan has reached a crossroads, and the choice is clear and stark: Stay on the path of peace and progress or return to the all-too-familiar terrain of civil war and poverty.

Credit: © 2002 CARE/Peter Bussian.

Much has been accomplished since the fall of the Taliban. Reconstruction has begun in earnest. In places like Kabul, and peaceful areas in the North, Afghan businesses and markets are thriving. Women are walking the streets, increasingly confident that they can leave their heavy cloth bhurkas at home.

Two million refugees have returned since January 2002 to rebuild their lives. After early delays, the road system is finally being repaired. But perhaps the best news of all is what has not happened. There has been no coup, no governmental pogroms. The international community is still here, supporting both security and the reconstruction effort. Slowly but steadily in many parts of Afghanistan, nights without gunshots and rocket explosions are becoming "normal."

And yet much work remains. On Afghanistan's two most critical issues, security and reconstruction, there are still huge challenges. Large parts of the Pashtun-majority South remain insecure, both for ordinary Afghans and the agencies like CARE that aim to help them. In May, both President Karzai and UN Ambassador Brahimi acknowledged that the security situation was becoming so precarious as to threaten the stability of the government, and the future of the country.

Security and reconstruction are dependent on each other. Without security, reconstruction cannot move ahead. Without reconstruction, people become increasingly frustrated, sowing the seeds for future instability. Through our policy advocacy, CARE aims to ensure that the international community does not forget its promises to support Afghanistan on these two critical fronts.

CARE's Program Response
CARE began working in Afghanistan in 1961, with projects in medical training and health care. We now have a staff of more than 700, nearly all of whom are Afghan. Both directly and working with Afghan partner organizations, we serve thousands of communities throughout the country. In the capital, Kabul, for example, CARE provides water to half a million people at a cost of about $1 per person per year. By the end of this year, we expect the government will be ready to take over this service.

Credit: © 2003 Tom Morley/CARE.

In other parts of Afghanistan, we engage in community-based education, large-scale water and agriculture projects, sanitation and health education. A key strategy for CARE in Afghanistan is to enable local organizations to play a bigger role in helping Afghans lift themselves out of poverty. Through our Partnership Umbrella Initiative, we provide financial support, strategic advice and technical assistance to more than 100 partner organizations running more than 200 projects throughout the country. Our community education project continues to ensure that more than 25,000 Afghan boys and girls have access to education.

Perhaps the most significant developments in our programming in 2003 are our efforts to strengthen the capacity of government to meet the needs of Afghans. We now work with several government ministries to help them provide services more efficiently and effectively.

CARE's Advocacy Response
CARE does more than address the symptoms of poverty and suffering; we aim to eliminate their underlying causes. In the immediate aftermath of the Taliban, we determined that the international community had to come through on its security and reconstruction promises if Afghans were going to move beyond war. We developed policy briefs on these two subjects entitled Rebuilding Afghanistan: A little Less Talk, A Lot More Action and A New Year's Resolution to Keep: Secure a Lasting Peace in Afghanistan.

Our advocacy efforts have met with some success. CARE's policy proposals for Afghanistan have been quoted by members of the U.S. Senate, by influential policy analysts in the United States and Britain, and by senior members of the Afghan Cabinet. Our messages on the need for adequate funding for reconstruction and security contributed to the Bush administration's decision to appropriate more than $1.1 billion for Afghanistan in fiscal year 2003.