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International Community in Afghanistan continues.......
In late November, as the fighting shifted to southern Afghanistan, representatives of Afghan opposition groups met in Berlin under UN auspices and agreed to form a multiethnic interim government. At the same time, the UN, the World Bank, and the Asian Development Bank sponsored a conference in Islamabad to map out a strategy for the reconstruction of a post-Taleban Afghanistan. The international community agreed to send some peacekeeping forces, initially to guarantee the safety of the new government and of relief efforts.
Despite ongoing security problems, hundreds of thousands of displaced persons and tens of thousands of refugees in Pakistan and Iran returned to their homes in northern and western Afghanistan, encouraged by the collapse of the Taleban, the end to the U.S. bombing, and the promise of improved security and assistance. However, even as they returned, tens of thousands of other Afghans were fleeing the southern city of Kandahar (home of Mullah Omar, the Taleban leader), which had become the new target of the U.S. military’s and Afghan opposition forces’ war effort.
At year’s end, despite continued fighting in areas of southern Afghanistan, a new Afghan government was in place in Kabul. The first international peacekeeping troops had arrived in the country, and, according to WFP, the UN agency had managed to deliver as much food into Afghanistan as was needed (an assertion that many NGOs questioned). Nevertheless, food shortages continued in areas that remained cut off by snow or where poor security prevented food distribution. It was difficult to estimate how many Afghans remained internally displaced at year’s end.
To be continued......