8. Conclusion: Results So Far, Challenges Ahead

The long-term goal of U.S. engagement with Afghanistan was announced by President Bush in a joint statement with Chairman Karzai on January 28, 2002, and reinforced by the President in his message to the U.S.-Afghan Women’s Council on April 24, 2002: "We jointly pledged to build a lasting American-Afghan partnership to help Afghanistan forge a future free from terror, want, and war. We also recognized the shared goal of an Afghan government that respects and is accountable to all Afghans, men and women alike."

These ideals will guide U.S. policy over a long and challenging path. The prospects for Afghan women, and particularly the necessarily long-term nature of even the most determined efforts to improve their quality of life, were well summed up in a recent report by a group of four leading NGOs active in the country:

This sound judgment yields a counsel not of despair, but of perseverance. A quick look back reveals how far Afghanistan’s women have come in just the past six months, even as current conditions suggest how far they still have to go to regain their rightful place in their own society.

In sum, the U.S. effort outlined above has provided a very solid start. It has helped to establish a promising new institutional framework for Afghans in general, and for Afghan women in particular, to pursue better lives in peace; to deliver impressively swift initial advances in the nutrition, health, and educational status of women and children all over the country; and to repatriate and rehabilitate hundreds of thousands of formerly homeless and destitute Afghan refugees, many of whom had languished in foreign camps for years, or even decades. At the same time, it should be recognized that the job of reconstructing Afghanistan, and with it of reclaiming the destiny of its more than 15 million women and children, has only just begun.

While it is difficult to single out any one area for special scrutiny over this upcoming interlude, it is clear that the June Emergency Loya Jirga and its immediate political aftermath will set the tone for much of what follows inside Afghanistan. This historic meeting was charged with moving the country forward on the march toward representative government: first through the establishment of a Transitional Government and then, within a prescribed period of less than two years, through a new constitution, national election, and permanent political order.

The next Report to the Congress on U.S. Support for Afghan Women, Children, and Refugees will undoubtedly need to highlight this longer-term aspect of American involvement in Afghanistan’s reconstruction, now that the most urgent needs of its most vulnerable citizens are beginning to be addressed.