By Laura J. Brown
Washington File Staff Writer

Washington -- The U.S. special envoy for Afghanistan says he is optimistic that Afghanistan has strong foundations for a successful transition to peace and stability.

James Dobbins is a veteran U.S. diplomat who has decades of experience working with broken societies in Haiti, Somalia, and the Balkans. He spoke at a U.S. Institute of Peace briefing on Afghan reconstruction in Washington January 15.

Dobbins characterized Afghanistan as one of the most dev
astated societies he has seen but said there are many reasons to remain hopeful that peace and stability will return to the war-torn country.

Afghanistan has strong foundations rarely present in places of grave conflict, he said, including "a strong sense of national consciousness, a history of independence and self-governance, and a set of institutions."

In addition to these qualities, Dobbins said, the Afghans have shown a remarkable willingness to work together across ethnic lines. While the Afghan groups argue over power sharing, "they don't argue whether to share power, they argue about how much of it each of them should have," he said.

Dobbins said the reasons to remain hopeful about the prospects for peace and reconstruction in Afghanistan are fourfold. First, the United States is engaged and intends to continue engagement in reconstruction efforts. Second, Afghanistan's neighbors have been helpful from the Bonn conference onward in "pushing Afghans together, rather than pulling them apart."

Third, the international community has offered more financial assistance than has ever been available to Afghanistan before. And fourth, Dobbins said, the population of Afghanistan is war-weary after two decades of conflict and is ready to repair the country.

"One can be more optimistic than at any time in the last couple of decades" about Afghanistan's prospects, Dobbins said.

Also speaking at the event was Barnett Rubin, who sounded a note of warning to aid agencies and organizations that aim to help Afghans.

"Reconstruction resources can be used as political resources and even military resources," said Rubin, who is director of studies and a senior fellow at the Center for International Cooperation at New York University. "We may be going through a transition from the problem of warlords to the problem of aid lords."

International development agencies and donor countries will meet January 20-21 in Tokyo to discuss how they can help Afghanistan recover from the devastating effects of two decades of war. In a recent assessment of the country's needs, the UN Development Program (UNDP), the World Bank and the Asian Development Bank estimated that the reconstruction of Afghanistan would cost about $15,000 million over the next ten years.

Rubin, who has published several books on Afghanistan's history of conflict and fragmentation, said that without adequate coordination and oversight, donors might inadvertently empower local warlords and render any central authority ineffective. The first task, he said, should be to establish a coherent strategy and mechanism to coordinate aid projects.

The Afghans "don't even have the basic office equipment, or communications equipment, and they can't pay the salaries of people working for them," he said. "They're not going to be able to deal with 15 or 20 different donor countries, 10 to 15 different UN agencies and 5,000 NGOs -- each of them wanting their separate project."

In addition to aid coordination, Rubin stressed the need for a security assistance force during the transition from warlord control to a stable government.