Embassy Row

Afghan demands

The ambassador from Afghanistan sounded frustrated.

The country desperately needs more international aid to rebuild, fight terrorism and eradicate the heroin trade, Ambassador Said Tayeb Jawad wrote in Ambassador’s Review magazine.

“To overcome these challenges and to make the nation-building process in Afghanistan irreversible, Afghans need and demand the accelerated support and the sustained engagement by the United States of America and the international community,” the ambassador wrote.

At a recent conference, foreign governments pledged $8.2 billion in reconstruction aid over three years, but Afghanistan wants $27.5 billion over seven years.

As Mr. Jawad explained, Afghanistan is facing monumental obstacles more than two years after the United States liberated the country from the Islamic extremist Taliban government, which sheltered Osama bin Laden and his al Qaeda terrorist army. But Afghanistan also is building a civil society.

“We also continue to confront security challenges posed by the terrorists and other elements,” he said. “We must expedite the process of building our national army and professional police force.”

International military aid includes 13,500 U.S. troops and 5,500 NATO soldiers battling the remnants of the Taliban and al Qaeda and continuing to search for bin Laden.

“We must accelerate the demobilization, disarmament and reintegration program and prevent extremists from hijacking democracy and the nation-building process for personal gain of factional agendas,” Mr. Jawad said.

He noted the resurgence of the heroin trade, warning that terrorists and warlords benefit from drug trafficking.

“Narcotics pose a serious challenge for all of us. Cultivation and trafficking of narcotics go hand in hand with terrorism and warlordism,” Mr. Jawad said.

He said Afghan heroin, which sells on the drug market at 100 times the price that growers get for the opium that is processed into heroin, is “one of the sources of the illegal money that funds international terrorism and crimes across the region.”

Despite the continuing problems, Afghanistan is developing a legislative and judicial system based on human rights and guided by Islamic principles, he said. The interim government of President Hamid Karzai is preparing for the “first free and fair national elections,” Mr. Jawad said.

The constitution — which begins “We, the people of Afghanistan” — guarantees women’s rights, establishes a two-chamber legislature and creates an independent judiciary. It also prohibits political parties based solely on ethnicity, language or religion.

The ambassador candidly noted that Afghanistan faces problems other than terrorism and drug trafficking.

“We must enhance government capacity to deliver services to all corners of the country, especially in areas prone to terrorist infiltration,” he said.

“We must eliminate corruption, nepotism and abuse of power that undermine our recovery process.”

Rent control

Russia learned a lesson in free-market capitalism when it negotiated the lease on the U.S. ambassador’s residence in rubles.

The rent on the elegant mansion in central Moscow, with a domed, 82-foot main hall, is now at the bargain-basement price of about $2.50 a year.

However, the Russian government is demanding back rent to compensate for the collapse of the ruble, which has lost 99.9 percent of its value since the 1980s when the United States renewed the lease.

The Russian bill comes to $9 million, Russia’s Interfax news agency reported this week.

The ambassador’s residence, called Spaso House, was built in 1914 and seized during the communist revolution in 1917. The United States has been renting it since 1933.

Ambassador Alexander Vershbow has said the United States is willing to renegotiate the lease.

• Call Embassy Row at 202/636-3297, fax 202/832-7278 or e-mail jmorrison @washingtontimes.com.