Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2004-02-12-Speech-4-005"
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"en.20040212.1.4-005"2
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".
Madam President, ladies and gentlemen, if you have ever visited Afghanistan or endeavoured to become more deeply informed about it, you will know how appalling and how extensive is the damage that has been done there – materially, culturally, socially and in human terms. Civil wars, the power struggles of local warlords, the Soviet war of occupation, the Taliban dictatorship, and the Northern Alliance’s bombardments too have killed and maimed millions, destroyed the economy of what was already an extremely poor country and left much of its society in ruins.
For centuries, Afghanistan was the plaything of foreign powers’ strategic interests. In my view, the present situation is above all the consequence of the wars sparked off by the Soviet invasion, and of the USA’s short-sighted policies, both of which gave the Taliban real military and political power in Afghanistan. The victims have always been Afghan women, children and men – in their millions.
This report, however, is not meant to be about our differences on the past – although we certainly have them – but about our common position that the international community must take responsibility for providing, on a massive scale, political, financial and economic support for the people of Afghanistan in shaping a peaceful, democratic and social future for themselves. This aid, and the financial support provided by the Commission in particular, must not be cut back; it must be stepped up to take account of the prevailing conditions. It would be irresponsible of the international community, in the shadow of the war in Iraq and of the tragic difficulties there, to backtrack on its commitment to Afghanistan and weaken its solidarity with its people. I believe that it is precisely because of the situation in Iraq and the unilateralist approach to it that Afghanistan must be one of the international community’s successes, on the basis of the UN Charter and with a pivotal role for the UN.
Significant and positive changes have been made since the Taliban were ousted. This has been principally to the credit of the political forces in Afghanistan itself. The constitution that has just been adopted is a particularly important indicator of progress, guaranteeing as it does fundamental democratic and human rights, doing justice to all ethnic groups and stressing equal treatment for women and men – the latter being immensely significant not only in view of the overthrown regime’s brutal oppression of women and girls, but also in view of the fact that the situation remains totally unsatisfactory today, with women and girls still at a massive disadvantage, excluded from participation in many aspects of social life and with dreadful violence against women a fact of day-to-day life, with thousands of incidents. The international community must, as we do in our report, demand universal human rights, with women’s rights included among them. Whilst not adopting an imperial approach to doing this, it must be consistent.
Despite these – and other – advances, the situation in Afghanistan is extremely volatile. The most pressing problems are the non-existent or minimal security in many regions, the potential for conflict inherent in the unbroken military might of warlords, governors and drug traffickers; the disarmament process has ground to a halt, it is proving difficult to demobilise soldiers from the private armies and reintegrate them into society, the Taliban are regrouping in some parts of the south and south-east of the country and there has been a dramatic increase in opium poppy cultivation and in drug trafficking. As these problems must not be allowed to prevent the forthcoming presidential elections being conducted successfully, I appeal to all Members of this House, and especially to those belonging to the Group of the European People’s Party (Christian Democrats) and European Democrats, not to support the amendments seeking to delete the description of these problems. Were we to do that, we would, I believe, be doing the people of Afghanistan no favours, nor would we be doing ourselves any if we want to keep Afghanistan as an international policy priority. Let me also remind you in this regard that, when we recently honoured the Secretary-General of the UN by awarding him and his organisation the Sakharov Prize, we did so in memory of the UN personnel killed in Iraq; the warning of a worsening security situation given as recently as 15 January by Lakhdar Brahimi, who was at the time the UN’s special envoy in Afghanistan and is now its special envoy in Iraq, must be taken seriously.
I would like to thank all my fellow members of the Committee, and all the groups. I believe that we had a common will to make clear how much Afghanistan is a priority. Many thanks also to the EU Commission, to its staff in Kabul and to Francesc Vendrell, its special representative there."@en1
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