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Afghanistan-American Reconstruction Summit
Georgetown University
Wednesday, July 24, 2002
USAID Administrator Andrew Natsios delivering remarks at the Afghanistan-American Reconstruction Summit.I would like to discuss what the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) is doing to help the people of Afghanistan rebuild their country.
For years, the United States has been the leading provider of emergency food assistance to the Afghan people, contributing more than 304,000 metric tons of food aid to Afghanistan in Fiscal Year 2001. We have already topped that figure this Fiscal Year: as of June 21 our assistance totaled more than 319,000 metric tons.
From the beginning, our goal has been to approach the challenges Afghanistan presents in strategic fashion, combining our emergency, transitional and medium-term programs in a manner that contributes directly to our long-term objective of sustained economic growth and development. But it is equally important that we continue to consult closely with the new Afghan Transitional Administration so that we can continue to adjust our assistance to new conditions as they emerge.
In October - even before the Taliban was driven from power - USAID launched a five-point assistance strategy to reduce death rates, minimize population movements (for this is when people are at the greatest risk), lower food prices, ensure our aid reached its intended recipients, and begin development programs. With the fall of the Taliban and the establishment of an Afghan Interim Authority in December, we were able to expand our focus to longer-term projects, such as cash-for-work road building and home reconstruction programs. By January we began funding the rehabilitation of wells, livestock, and agriculture and spot reconstruction of schools, irrigation canals, health facilities and roads.
As the situation improved, we continued to expand our programs in the four areas where we are focusing our efforts. These are:
- Revitalizing agriculture
- Enhancing education
- Improving health
- Strengthening Afghan Institutions to Assure Stability
Revitalizing Agriculture
Afghanistan has always been a largely agrarian society. Before the Soviet invasion in 1979, the country was self-sufficient in food production. It exported fruits, nuts, wheat, cotton, and livestock products, and its raisins and almonds were prized throughout the region. Although the violence and drought have caused considerable dislocation, historically 75 percent of the Afghan population lives in the countryside and depends on farming and herding.
USAID Administrator Andrew Natsios at podium in foreground with Georgetown president John DeGioia and Afganistan Ambassador to the U.S. Ishaq Shahryar seated at left.Our goal, therefore, is to revitalize this key sector as quickly as possible. This, I believe, is the best way USAID can help the Afghan people.
The challenges are immense, however. Less than six percent of the country is in production today. Large numbers of orchards, vineyards and irrigation systems have been destroyed. The countryside is heavily mined. The land shows signs of serious soil degradation, over-grazing, deforestation, and desertification. And the roads that farmers depend on to get their products to market have been badly damaged, if not destroyed.
The drought, now in its fourth year, has added immeasurably to the country's problems. While there has been some relief in the north, large portions of Afghanistan continue to suffer terribly from lack of water. The snowfall in the central Hazarajat region was well below normal this winter and rivers that depend on the snowmelt are drying up earlier than usual this year. Wells are dry and millions of Afghans have no access to clean water.
The combination of the drought and 22 years of armed conflict has driven much of Afghanistan's rural population to desperate measures. Families have long since sold off or slaughtered their animals, eaten the seeds they should have planted this spring, and sold their household goods. Resourceful and resilient as the Afghan people are, many have exhausted their coping mechanisms and now find themselves hopelessly in debt. While the famine many feared last winter was averted - thanks in large measure to the emergency food assistance the United States supplied -- seven and a half million Afghans remain still dependent on international food aid.
It should be clear to all of us that without urgent attention to this situation, Afghans will continue to leave the countryside, the economy will lag, and a large percentage of the population remain dependent on humanitarian assistance.
The first step, therefore, has been to address the basic factors of agricultural production - seeds, fertilizer, water control systems, and basic farming implements. Equally important is water for drinking, hygiene, livestock, and crop production.
Since late last winter, we have been distributing 15,000 metric tons of fertilizer, 7,000 metric tons of special drought-resistant seeds, tools, and agricultural equipment. Overall, we plan to distribute 48,000 metric tons of these improved wheat seeds in the next two years. This will increase agricultural production by as much as 772,000 metric tons, an increase in 80-100 percent in yield and is drought resistant to reduce vulnerability to future drought. And at the same time, we have begun putting Afghans to work on critical infrastructure projects such as farm-to-market roads and irrigation systems. Orchards and vineyards, which take time to be productive, are also being restored and livestock herds replenished.
Given the critical importance of water management, we are our partners to drill wells in Balkh and Baghlan Provinces and construct piped water systems in Bamiyan. Others are rehabilitating canals and reservoirs and constructing erosion barriers. We will also fund a nationwide water resource management assessment to help us respond to the drought more systematically. Further, we are working with Afghan authorities to monitor rainfall, snowpack and weather conditions, and will help them plan and coordinate water use.
Enhancing Educational Opportunities
Education is our second strategic objective. Clearly, a good in and of itself, education is the first source of human capital development. Like the agricultural economy, though, Afghanistan's school system may take years to reconstruct. In addition to the physical destruction many schools suffered, the Taliban's policies, which prevented girls over the age of eight from attending school and prohibited women from teaching, has taken a heavy human toll.
Today, only about 40 percent of Afghan children attend primary school, so with the diminished quality of the schools they attend, it behooves us to move quickly in this sector. Not only do the children benefit from the knowledge and skills they receive, but school gives structure to young lives that have been traumatized by conflict and chaos and offers them healthy alternatives to the drug trade and the armed militias of the warlords.
Another very positive development is the fact that women teachers are returning to the classroom and earning salaries for the first time in years.
As with agriculture, our education strategy got off to an early start. Through a USAID grant to the University of Nebraska at Omaha, we have edited and printed nearly 10 million math, science, reading, civics and social studies textbooks in Dari and Pashtu. Half of them were ready for the opening of the Afghan school year in March.
We are also providing food to 47,000 school children in Kabul and northeastern Afghanistan. We expect this to grow to a million children as the program expands. In addition, we are giving girls vegetable oil every month as an incentive to their families to let them attend school. We are also funding women's bakeries that furnish bread to schoolchildren and rehabilitating hundreds of school buildings.
Among these are the Kabul Teacher Training College and the Sultan Aziz High School in Mazar-e-Sharif. Once the area's premier high schools for girls, Sultan Aziz High School had been shut down by the Taliban and badly damaged in subsequent fighting. Now, I am pleased to say, the building has been repaired and 3,000 girls are attending classes.
Through other USAID programs we are giving 50,000 teachers monthly food packages to supplement their income, building up the country's libraries and training library staff, and funding refresher courses for teachers.
Improving Health
The fact that most Afghans are getting enough to eat has obscured the fact that millions are suffering from the long-term effects of malnutrition and undernourishment. We are currently in the process of trying to determine the extent of the damage and the precise nature of people's health care needs. This is a very complex task and may take months to complete.
Still, we have some figures to go by. In 1999, women's life expectancy was just over 47, while for men it was two years lower. To put this into some kind of perspective, those are roughly the same rates as southern Africa where a third of the adult population is HIV-positive. Afghan children have one of the highest mortality rates in the world: more than a quarter of them die before they reach five years of age. And more than half of those who do, die within their first year. These rates are among the worst in the world, unlike anything Asia has seen in many years and only comparable to countries like the Congo or Sierra Leone.
According to a UNICEF study of a few years ago, 48 percent of Afghan children are moderately to severely underweight. A large percentage of them are chronically malnourished and therefore highly vulnerable to diseases like diarrhea, malaria, and respiratory infections.
This vulnerability to disease is not true just for children, however. Malaria, tuberculosis, measles, and anemia remain serious problems. Afghan women suffer from one of the highest maternal mortality rates in the world. Altogether one Afghan women in 15 will die in childbirth or the complications that stem from it. Adding to these health problems is the fact that only about a third of the country's districts has a functioning maternal or child health clinic.
For all these reasons, primary health care is a major emphasis of our overall strategy. Our goal is to improve people's health, create jobs in the health care sector and strengthen support in the new government's public health officials.
To do this, we have made a $5 million grant to support the Ministry of Public Health's efforts to train and equip community health care workers, rehabilitate health clinics and hospitals, and establish a health surveillance system. Overall, since October, we have contributed more than $8 million to drill new wells, install pipelines and dig pit latrines. We are distributing water purification tablets, soap, and drinking water, while training people in hygiene, sanitation and waste disposal. Our funds are rebuilding a hospital in Kandahar and two in Kabul. And other USAID programs are making it possible to immunize more than two million Afghan children against measles, support a polio eradication project, and rehabilitate land mine victims.
Strengthening Afghan Institutions
The fourth part of our strategy is strengthening Afghanistan's local and national institutions. First and foremost, we want to support the Afghan Transitional Administration (ATA) in its efforts to gather strength, build credibility and re-establish a peaceful, stable nation. After so many years of violence and destruction, the people of the country deserve a government that can help them bind up the wounds of war and get on with their lives. This, of course, will be a lengthy process, even under the best of circumstances. But the United States and the U.S. Agency for International Development are in this for the long haul, as President Bush and Secretary of State Powell have made clear on numerous occasions.
For the present, our goal has been to work with President Karzai and other Afghan authorities to determine, in collaboration with them, where we best can help. In January, when I was in Afghanistan for the second time in three months, we re-opened our USAID mission. The fact that we have been able to staff it with an exceptionally talented and experienced team has been a major help to our efforts.
Most recently, we contributed $3 million to U.N. operations to bring delegates to Kabul for the Loya Jirga and to set up an operations and information center while it met. We also gave a short-wave transmitter to Radio Kabul so it could broadcast the proceedings throughout the country and beyond. Since then, recognizing that radio is the most important medium in the country, we have purchased air time so that the station could continue operating.
It is no use having a government if they have no offices or phones or computers with which to operate. So we did an engineering study of the requirements, coordinated our efforts with other donors, and began work a few months ago to rehabilitate the Ministries of Agriculture and Livestock, Women's Affairs, Information and Culture, Rural Development, Reconstruction, Water and Power, Irrigation, Foreign Affairs, and Commerce. Another USAID program is providing training and computers to the Central Bank and has set up communications links with its regional centers in Herat, Kandahar, Nangahar, and Mazar-e-Sharif.
Conclusion
I would like to conclude by thanking Dr. DeGioia and Georgetown University for organizing this important summit. We are fortunate indeed to have so many key members of the Afghan Transitional Administration here where they can meet face-to-face with senior U.S. business, government and NGO leaders. The level of technical expertise and private sector experience represented here is impressive and encouraging. I certainly hope that the business leaders who attend will leave this summit more committed than ever to helping the people of Afghanistan rebuild their nation.
We at USAID have been working together with President Karzai and his cabinet to build an innovative and effective assistance program since I first visited the country in November of 2001. Since then, my staff and I have spent many hours with President Karzai and his cabinet both here and in Afghanistan. We all know that rebuilding the country is an immense undertaking which the Afghan people and their new government are confronting with great energy. President Bush and Secretary Powell have instructed me to make USAID support for Afghan reconstruction, working together with the Afghan Transitional Administration, our top priority. So we welcome the opportunity to broaden the discussion this event affords. I am confident what takes place here over the next two days can and will make an important contribution to Afghanistan, and I can promise you that we at USAID will do everything we can to make this summit a success.
Thank you.
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