Editorial: London conference - impact and prospects

The London Conference on Afghanistan opened in London on January 31with the participation of more than 70 nations and international agencies, . Afghan president Hamed Karzai, British prime minister Tony Blair and UN Secretary General Kofi Annan chaired the historic meeting. The conference discussed the five-year development strategy for Afghanistan and possible ways of extending more aid to the country. The Afghan president will try his best to convince the international community to funnel the contributions through his government. But experts are of the view that the legitimacy of the development strategy could be in question, since the government did not put it to parliament for approval before presenting it to the London conference. If the government fails to produce changes in the living standards of poverty-stricken Afghans after receiving billions of dollars pledged by the international community at the London conference, then the meeting will be of no use to Afghans and there is no need to ask for the money. Because of the poor management of the billions of dollars contributed by the international community, the people’s economic situation has seen little improvement and corruption has increased. No one has attended to this or tried to control it.