IRELAND FALTERS AGAIN

IRELAND FALTERS AGAIN
Washington Post: For a lesson in the challenges of post-conflict reconstruction, consider Northern Ireland. There, the 1998 Good Friday agreement, which has many times been hailed for ending Ireland's troubles, is threatening to unravel. The Irish Republican Army, which was expected to give up its arms as part of the peace process, has hung on to nearly all of them. Now it stands accused of collecting the names and addresses of prison wardens and security force members, as if it were planning a resumption of terrorist activity.
Sinn Fein
The allegations of spying have provoked fury from David Trimble, leader of the Protestant Ulster Unionist Party, particularly because the espionage appears to have implicated members of Sinn Fein, the IRA's supposedly peaceful political wing. Trimble understandably complains that Sinn Fein, whose leaders sit in Northern Ireland's new power-sharing assembly, should stop trying to ride two horses; he has threatened to lead his Ulster Unionists out of the assembly unless Sinn Fein is expelled. In short, Protestant-Catholic cooperation has reached an impasse.
The solution is for outsiders to intervene. In this case, the outsider is the British government, which has the power to suspend the power-sharing assembly rather than let it collapse under its own weight. To do this the British need the support of the Irish government and an endorsement from Washington. Fortunately, they seem likely to get both. If Britain does not suspend the assembly, Trimble will deliver on his threat to walk out of it, triggering constitutional complications that would be difficult to unscramble.
Once the suspension happens, outsiders need to push both sides back toward cooperation. This will mean holding Sinn Fein/IRA accountable for its apparent espionage, pushing it to take serious steps toward disarmament and addressing its destructive refusal to endorse the new, religiously integrated police force by accepting seats on the police board. It also means a more serious effort to rein in freelance Protestant thugs, whose violence helps create a pretext for the IRA to keep its weapons.
Lasting shadow
Both sides need to face the fact that there is no good alternative to the peace process. You might think that the territory's leaders would have no difficulty seeing this, but the decades of animosity cast a lasting shadow, which is why outside engagement remains sadly essential.
AFGHANS' LONG ROAD BACK
Los Angeles Times: One year after the United States forced the Taliban from power in Afghanistan, reconstruction of the shattered nation is proceeding slowly. U.S. military civil affairs units have done good work to build schools, dig wells and clear canals full of rubble. So President Bush was right to say on Friday that the nation has "entered a new era of hope." But major projects like building highways to connect the main cities remain stalled, and the central government is having trouble outmaneuvering warlords and extending its writ to all corners of the land. So that hope is fragile.
Power plants
We agree with aid workers' complaints that too much money is going to firms for the design of massive projects such as dams and power plants. More, they say, should be spent on actual construction of roads, houses and schools. And foreign donors should channel much of that money through the central government of President Hamid Karzai rather than through nongovernmental organizations. Afghans need to see Karzai's government employing people to make the bricks, build the scaffolding and mix the cement for new structures.
Now warlords are paying their followers more than the government can afford. That has bolstered fiefdoms ruled by many of the same men who battled among themselves for years and caused such chaos that Afghans at first applauded the Taliban for ending the violence and imposing order. The more entrenched the warlords become, the less Karzai's government can impose its will, the greater the chances that civil war will again break out.
The warlords' influence could be diminished if countries stationed their international peacekeeping troops in cities other than Kabul, the capital. Foreign soldiers could shield villagers from extortion by tribal thugs and reassure them they will be safe when they clear their land and plant crops. The U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee has urged the Bush administration to push allied nations to send peacekeepers to such cities as Kandahar and Herat.
Human rights
Afghanistan also needs money to rebuild its institutions. It has established commissions to deal with human rights, a new constitution and the judiciary -- necessities for the long-term stability of a nation torn apart by the Soviet invasion of 1979 and subsequent warfare.
U.S. officials say about 65 percent of the nearly $2 billion that foreign donor nations promised to Afghanistan for this year has been spent or is in the pipeline to be spent on future projects. Washington should push countries that have lagged in fulfilling their pledges to come up with the other 35 percent. After the moujahedeen defeated the Soviets, most nations forgot about Afghanistan. The Taliban and Al Qaeda did not. The world should not forget the country again.