Editorial: London conference – the easy part is over

For once, just about everyone seems satisfied. The London Conference held at Lancaster House on January 31 and February 1 has been declared a success. The delegations, including an ostentatiously large contingent from Afghanistan, have packed up and gone home. The world has renewed its promises to Afghanistan: we are not being abandoned, and we have been reassured that there is to be another round of generous aid-giving. The government is satisfied, because irrespective of the murmurings of discontent in parliament at the cabinet’s performance, the international community has again placed confidence in the administration of President Hamed Karzai. There were some international figures who supported the government’s calls to channel assistance through official institutions rather than wasting it on now-notorious non-government organisations. But how justified is the upbeat mood, and how accurately does all the optimism reflect the state of play in the post-Bonn political process? Predictably, headlines about the conference outcome emphasised the aid commitments. The Afghanistan Compact provides an ideal document by which our parliamentarians can hold the government to account. Perhaps over the next five years, we might see a little less obsession about who holds which ministerial post, as our members of parliament start to concentrate instead on encouraging the government to get on with implementing the ambitious programme of reform it has just signed up to.