Starting From Scratch... Again.(rebuilding Afghanistan)(Brief Article)

KOIZUMI is prime minister of Japan.

I was only 3 when U.S. air raids obliterated Tokyo in 1945. Since I was so young, I don't remember the bombing or its aftermath. But I learned of the utter misery of that time from my parents. Where the residences and shops of hundreds of thousands once stood, nothing--not a tree, not a building--could be found still upright. As my family's home was among those burnt down, we fled to Yokohama, then moved to Yokosuka, where we have lived ever since.

Looking over Japanese cities today it is hard to imagine that they were once scenes of total devastation and wretched poverty. Japanese citizens relied on their own efforts to rebuild their country from the ground up--but the support the international community provided to the Japanese people helped speed that recovery.

Now, in Afghanistan, another war has essentially come to an end. What remains to be seen is whether the Afghan peace--the creation of a secure and stable society inhospitable to Osama bin Laden and his kind- -can be won.

Afghanistan is miserably poor. It has lost almost all of its economic infrastructure to 20 years of war. An estimated 8 million mines lurk in its soil. It is flooded with small arms and is a haven for drug trafficking. It has not had a functioning education system for more than decade, and most of its middle class and professionals have fled. Average life expectancy is a mere 46 years.

The severity and scale of destruction inflicted upon Afghanistan is enormous. The international community must avoid the temptation to accept a halfway solution for the country which slaps a bandage on its worst problems and gives up on the rest. In Afghanistan I believe we have opportunities to challenge our conceptions of the possible. The Afghans are resourceful and brave. Their agricultural products once filled the larders of Central Asia. Before the Taliban, they possessed a vivid, multifaceted cultural tradition.