Looking over Japanese cities today it is hard to imagine that they were once scenes of total devastation and wretched poverty. Japanese citizens relied on their own efforts to rebuild their country from the ground up–but the support the international community provided to the Japanese people helped speed that recovery.
Now, in Afghanistan, another war has essentially come to an end. What remains to be seen is whether the Afghan peace–the creation of a secure and stable society inhospitable to Osama bin Laden and his kind–can be won.
Afghanistan is miserably poor. It has lost almost all of its economic infrastructure to 20 years of war. An estimated 8 million mines lurk in its soil. It is flooded with small arms and is a haven for drug trafficking. It has not had a functioning education system for more than decade, and most of its middle class and professionals have fled. Average life expectancy is a mere 46 years.
The severity and scale of destruction inflicted upon Afghanistan is enormous. The international community must avoid the temptation to accept a halfway solution for the country which slaps a bandage on its worst problems and gives up on the rest. In Afghanistan I believe we have opportunities to challenge our conceptions of the possible. The Afghans are resourceful and brave. Their agricultural products once filled the larders of Central Asia. Before the Taliban, they possessed a vivid, multifaceted cultural tradition.
Afghans do not need much right now to begin again, just some of the necessities we take for granted. Free movement throughout their land without fear. Children’s receiving an education as they do in other countries. Infrastructure to secure basic public health. Living spaces, fields and orchards free of mines and ordinance.
I want to do my utmost to help lay the groundwork for this hopeful future. Next week Japan will serve as the host of the Afghan Reconstruction Conference. My government is consulting with the interim government in Kabul over the development of a comprehensive health, education, demining and refugee-resettlement plan, and will be working closely with nongovernment organizations in order to focus our aid efforts on the grass roots.
The 1990s brought a great coming together of the world. Increased immigration and travel, freer trade, the transition to market economies and plunging costs of computing and communications all brought us closer to one another. More and more, the fates of human beings are moving in concert, whether in terms of the inception of technology, in the rises and falls of our economies, or in the products we consume.
We cannot let September 11 reverse this positive trend. The terrorists who aimed passenger jets at the World Trade Center towers struck at the heart of the interconnectedness of all things. It would compound the tragedy if the fear of terrorism were to tempt each country into going its own way, rejecting a framework built upon international cooperation.
I have stood at Ground Zero, dumbstruck and outraged. The world was astounded by the horror of September 11 and in reaction it came together as one. Now I ask the international community to work together to give Afghanistan the same chance my country received half a century ago–the chance to make good on the promise that lies within all humankind.
