AFGHAN PRESIDENT Hamid Karzai has said that western allies were compounding his country’s corruption problems with “parallel structures” of direct aid and private security firms.
Mr Karzai told the Munich Security Conference he would commence a three-year transition of power into Afghan hands on March 21st, the Afghan new year.
However, he complained that his efforts to “focus on the drivers of corruption” were being undermined by western dealings with regional leaders that bypass Kabul.
“The ultimate goal should be to enable Afghanistan to take all responsibility for the delivery of governance and services,” he said, suggesting that private security firms and reconstruction teams reporting to international forces frustrated his own government’s efforts.
Nato plans to have more than 300,000 Afghan soldiers trained and in place by year-end to begin taking over from 140,000 foreign troops.
German foreign minister Guido Westerwelle warned that “2011 has to be a year of success” in Afghanistan ahead of a planned withdrawal of troops by the end of 2014.
“That included better government leadership because, in many regions in Afghanistan, there is nothing even approaching effective and fair administration; corruption and cronyism are not isolated cases,” he said. “We need a government that works for the people and protects human rights, we need independent judiciary.”
Meanwhile, British prime minister David Cameron used his appearance at the Munich conference to blame the rise of home-grown European extremism on failed multiculturalism and a closed idea of national identity.
Governments should act to counter the confusion between Muslim beliefs and Islamic extremism while ending state support for ideological organisations that act as a gateway to extremist behaviour. The best defence against extremism, he said, was not misplaced tolerance but a liberalism that ensures immigrants embrace the language, culture and values of their adoptive home.
“It will help build stronger pride in local identity so people feel free to say yes, I am a Muslim, I am a Hindu, I am Christian but I am also a Londoner or a Berliner too,” he said. Mr Cameron said he was delighted to “speak at an event older than I am”, in a lively speech that showed why world leaders love this exclusive gathering, now in its 47th year.
In the packed ballroom of Munich’s Bayerischer Hof hotel – a three-day security lock-down – European Council president Herman van Rompuy tried his hand at humour too. Despite the euro zone reform battle, he insisted: “We are still sexy as the European Union.” On the sexy summit scale, Munich fares badly compared to Davos. But what it lacks in participants’ net worth it makes up for in concentration of political power.
In a semi-informal atmosphere leaders can meet privately and in public podium discussions without the need to present cobbled-together compromises dressed up as “breakthroughs”.
Ireland’s economic woes weren’t on the programme officially, but clearly occupied the minds of attendees.
Financier George Soros expressed concern that the EU is on course to “cast in stone” the flaws of the euro zone. Rather than the hoped-for economic convergence he fears that, by not restructuring existing euro zone debt, Berlin’s reform proposals will forge a divergent, two-speed union.
“Surplus countries are forging ahead and debtor countries are sinking under the weight of their debt,” he said. “That’s unpalatable and will result in extremist anti-European parties rising and [such] governments coming to power.” He said the future fate of the EU could already be seen in Ireland.
“In the case of Ireland,” he said, “a country that’s had to absorb the debt created by the banks, there is tremendous resentment”.