PARIS - Afghan President Hamid Karzai pledged to fight the corruption in his administration and the lawlessness that has weakened his government as the international community delivered a promise Thursday of an additional US$21 billion to help rebuild his battered country.
Wrestling that promise from Karzai was on the mind of Canada's acting Foreign Affairs Minister David Emerson, who met with the Afghan leader at the donors' conference in Paris.
"We made clear to the president that Canadians do expect, if we are to be in Afghanistan -- Canadians lives are being lost here, a lot of money is being spent here -- there's got to be a sense of confidence that the money and the lives are in pursuit of something worthy,'' Emerson said at the end of the conference.
"When there is a scent of corruption, you get people turning off. And so I explained to him the importance of dealing with that and dealing with it in very specific ways.''
Karzai, who has enjoyed six years of support from the West, recognized that the failure to battle corruption and crack down on warlords has set back the reconstruction effort.
"Afghanistan needs large amounts of aid, but precisely how aid is spent is just as important,'' Karzai told the conference.
His effort to promote a five-year program to diversify the Afghan economy away from opium production, rebuild the agricultural sector and increase access to electricity was dealt a blow just days before the meeting of 80 countries.
Karzai's former finance minister, Ashraf Ghani, said bungling by the government in Kabul was partly responsible for the resurgence of the Taliban. The comments fuelled speculation within Afghanistan that Ghani will challenge Karzai in next year's presidential election.
In the end, the need to help secure and feed the country overshadowed concerns about corruption at the conference.
The United States led the way, promising $10.2 billion.
Donors pledged to co-ordinate their aid better than in the past, when billions poured into the country, often with little oversight. In a statement, they urged Afghan officials to tackle corruption.
French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner said the final figure was beyond his dreams. It exceeded the $15 billion to $20 billion Afghan officials had hoped for.
Only $15 billion on previous pledged delivered so far
The new pledges are in addition to $25 billion pledged by the international community since 2002. In the weeks before the Paris conference, there was frustration among Afghan ministers that previous aid commitments had not been kept.
The Agency Co-ordinating Body for Afghan Relief, an umbrella organization representing relief groups, said in March that only $15 million had been delivered.
The group complained that 40 per cent of the aid flowing into Afghanistan returns to donor countries in form of corporate profits and consultant fees.
Thirty years of war have left Afghanistan with virtually no educated middle class with which to run the government.
Many of those returning to shattered country are mostly lured away from the C$70 per month jobs into working for international agencies, often for 10 times that amount.
Canada pledged prior to the conference to increase its aid commitment $600 million, bringing Ottawa's total to C$1.9 billion over 10 years.
A portion of that, C$50 million, will go right where the Afghans had wanted, toward increasing agricultural production with the refurbishment of the Dalah dam in Kandahar province.
It's estimated as much as $4 billion is needed over five years to revive the agricultural sector, but there was a lot of skepticism among nations that attended the one-day meeting.
Afghan farmers just finished harvesting another bumper crop of opium-producing poppies and government eradication efforts, particularly in the restive southern region, are deemed a joke.
Rampant corruption among government officials and police have allowed farmers to continue growing poppy and avoid having their fields torn up.
Karzai said giving farmers alternatives to growing opium poppies and trafficking drugs is crucial to Afghanistan's future.
"Opium is about survival'' for these farmers, he said.
Most Afghans lack proper sanitation and 80 per cent have no electricity at home, despite the international aid that has poured in since the Taliban's ouster in 2001. Life expectancy remains under 50 years, and food shortages over the past year have pushed many Afghans to the brink.
The Taliban still recruit in desperately poor rural areas, and their insurgency continues to claim lives more than six years after U.S.-led troops invaded following the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks blamed on al-Qaida, whose militants the Taliban were sheltering.
To date, 85 Canadian soldiers and one diplomat have died in Afghanistan.
Earlier in the spring, Parliament agreed to extend the deployment of 2,500 strong Canadian military force in Kandahar until 2011.
Despite three attempts on his life, the most recent in April, Karzai is widely expected to run for another term as president.
His brother, Ahmed Wali Karzai, whom U.S. and British diplomats have accused of corruption and possibly benefiting from cross-border opium smuggling, said his brother deserves a chance to finish what he started.
"He's honest and he works really, really hard,'' Wali Karzai said in a recent interview with The Canadian Press.
