Nick Smith, December 21, 2003

As a member of the International Relations committee, I have joined in the search for solutions that will add to our security in countries such as Iraq, Liberia, Sudan, the Congo, and Afghanistan. With the chaos in Iraq and now the dramatic capture of Saddam Hussein, the conflict in Afghanistan has received little media attention in recent months. While the political situation there is still unsettled and the people are among the poorest in the world, progress is being made and there is hope for the future.

The U.S. forces that drove the al Qaeda terrorists and the Taliban out of power in 2001 ended two decades of almost continuous conflict that took a terrible toll on the Afghan people. Twenty percent of the population had been driven out of the country; 200,000 Afghans had been disabled by land mines; industry, education, transportation, and health care systems had been neglected; life expectancy was little more than 40 years; and the average annual income was less than $180. Before the U.S. invasion, the country was riven by warlords and its most successful product was illicit opium.

Progress in the last two years has been incremental with huge challenges remaining. Afghan President Hamid Karzai is leading the loya jirga - or grand assembly - that will draft a new and democratic Constitution. Nationwide elections are expected in the summer of 2004. An important part of making a Constitution work will be the reassertion of central government control over the warlords. Karzai recently won a victory by getting warlords who had been collecting customs duties to share those revenues with the Afghan central government. Transportation improvements such as the newly completed road between the two biggest cities of Kabul and Kandahar have also advanced the economy and centralized government.

The roughly 13,100 American troops and 7,700 more from other NATO countries are helping stabilize the government. They’re training professional Afghan military and police forces, and conducting Operation Avalanche along the Pakistan border to round up al Qaeda and Taliban fugitives and militants. These efforts will be stepped up with new funding at less than one-tenth of what were spending in Iraq and additional support from allies. Officials estimate that 75 percent of the country is now secure with the remaining hot spots in Southeast Afghanistan along the Pakistan border and around Kandahar.

Opium production continues to be a major problem in areas outside of central government control. The Taliban financed many of their activities through drug sales, a tactic now adopted by resistance groups and some warlords. As a result, opium production appears to be rising. Controlling poppy cultivation is important, not only to reduce drug supplies, but to encourage farmers to grow sustainable crops and eliminate the atmosphere of lawlessness and violence that accompanies the drug trade.

The longer-term outlook for Afghanistan, however, seems bright. In the last two years, children have gone back to school in huge numbers, medicine and health care are far more available, the legal economy has grown by an estimated 50 percent, and shops are bustling and full of goods. There will be a need for U.S. and NATO forces to be there for the foreseeable future. But thanks to hard work and good judgment, the gains in Afghanistan are compare favorably with other world trouble spots.

Congressman Nick Smith, a Republican, represents Michigan's 7th Congressional District in the U.S. House of Representatives.