08/29/2002
EDITORIAL NUMBER=0-10096

RUMSFELD ON AFGHANISTAN

The United States-led coalition is in Afghanistan not as conquerors but as liberators. As U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld put it, "Our goal...is to create conditions so the country does not again become a terrorist training camp."

"Terrorists are like parasites," said Mr. Rumsfeld. "They seek out weak and struggling countries to serve as hosts for their attacks on innocent men, women, and children. If we are to ensure that terrorist networks do not return to take over Afghanistan once again, then we have to help the Afghan people build the infrastructure that will allow them to achieve true self-government and self-reliance."

The Afghan people need schools to educate the young so they can grow up to be good citizens. They need roads and bridges to link the different regions and to make Afghanistan hospitable to foreign investment. They need irrigation so farmers can earn a living and feed the Afghan people. And they need clean water and adequate medical facilities to reduce the threat of disease.

The U.S. remains the world’s leading donor of humanitarian assistance in Afghanistan. Since October 2001, the U.S. has provided five-hundred-million dollars for relief and reconstruction. Another one-billion five-hundred-million dollars has been authorized over the next four years.

The U.S. has rebuilt hospitals and clinics in Kabul, Mazar, Herat and Kunduz. The U.S. has rebuilt thirty-eight schools, and has completed the reconstruction of the Bagram Bridge and the road connecting Bagram to Kabul.

Coalition partners are also making important contributions. De-mining teams from Norway, Britain, Poland, and Jordan as well as the United States, have helped clear land mines from thousands of square kilometers of land. Jordan built a hospital in Mazer-e-Sharif that’s now treated over one-hundred-thousand patients. Spain and Korea have also built hospitals, and Japan has pledged five-hundred-million dollars to help rehabilitate Afghanistan.

More needs to be done. But Afghanistan is becoming a more livable place, "a fact underscored," said U.S. Defense Secretary Rumsfeld, "by the flood of refugees that are returning to the country. Each of those refugees have made a judgment that conditions in Afghanistan today are better than what existed before and better than where they’ve been living."

As President George W. Bush said, "The power and vitality of our coalition have been proven in Afghanistan."