British Prime Minister Tony Blair visited Afghanistan on Monday and promised its war-weary people the world would not abandon them again.
Speaking at Bagram airbase north of Kabul, Blair said the world had learned how high a price was paid for neglect.
"Afghanistan has been a failed state for too long and the whole world has paid the price -- in the export of terror, the export of drugs and finally in the explosion in death and destruction on the streets of the US," he told a news conference at the base.
Blair, the first Western leader to visit Kabul since the attacks on New York and Washington on September 11, hailed the "extraordinary progress" achieved by the US-led war against the former Taliban regime.
"We are always on the side of the Afghan people against the Taliban," he said. "And we remain on the side of the Afghan people today."
Blair flew into Bagram in the dead of night on a British Royal Air Force C130 Hercules with his wife Cherie and around a dozen British government officials.
They were met at the airport by Hamid Karzai, the leader of Afghanistan's interim government. Blair was also expected to meet the commander of British forces in Afghanistan, Major-General John McColl and the United Nations envoy to Afghanistan, Lakhdar Brahimi.
In his speech, Blair praised British troops leading the UN-mandated International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) in Kabul.
Around 500 British troops are deployed in the Afghan capital where they are engaged in peacekeeping operations alongside local forces and troops from the United States, France, Germany, the Netherlands and Canada.
The full ISAF force is expected to eventually number 4,500 troops with deployment from up to 16 nations. Britain has said a total of 1,500 of its troops will be deployed.
Blair has been one of US president George Bush's staunchest allies in the war against terror declared by Washington after September 11.
Months of relentless air raids and ground operations by Afghan fighters and Western special forces have destroyed the Taliban regime and severely damaged the al Qaeda network based in Afghanistan.
But America's two most wanted men, Taliban supreme leader Mullah Mohammad Omar and Osama bin Laden, the man blamed for the September 11 attacks on New York and Washington, remain at large.
Blair said the destruction of the Taliban had opened up vast possibilities for Afghanistan to regain stability and address its political and humanitarian crises.
"There has been a huge increase in the flow of humanitarian help to Afghanistan and extraordinary progress on the diplomatic front too," he told the news conference.
The establishment of Afghanistan's new administration was a tribute to the United Nations, Blair said, and also to the Afghan people.
"The international community is here to help in the long term but Afghanistan's future is in the hands of the Afghan people and it is exactly as it should be," he said.
(China Daily January 8, 2002)
