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Rebuilding the two countries may cost billions for several years

Thursday, April 17, 2003

By George Gedda, The Associated Press

WASHINGTON -- When the United States was driven from Vietnam three decades ago, it did not spend a dime to deal with the rubble left behind.

Victory brings a wholly different -- and expensive -- reality. The Bush administration is beginning to tackle reconstruction in Iraq at a time when a similar process in Afghanistan is still in its infancy.

There are no official estimates on how much these tasks will cost, but they won't come cheap.

A Council on Foreign Relations study suggests Iraqi reconstruction will cost $20 billion a year for several years. Congress has approved a supplemental appropriation for $2.5 billion to cover humanitarian needs and initial reconstruction costs.

There is one surefire way an invading country can avoid huge reconstruction costs: Lose the war.

In 1975, embittered by defeat in Vietnam, the United States broke off trade and diplomatic ties after the Communist victory, a situation that persisted for 20 years.

The only war-related U.S. government aid effort, begun in 1991, was a small program to provide prosthetic devices to Vietnamese war victims.

During wartime peace negotiations, the United States raised with North Vietnam the possibility of a $3.5 billion postwar reconstruction program. But once Communist control of Vietnam was completed, that option was discarded because of perceived North Vietnamese violations of the 1973 Paris peace agreement.

This meant no U.S. assistance to help the country recover from the death and destruction caused by long years of bombing, not to mention the effects of the herbicide Agent Orange.

Vietnam estimates there are 1 million Agent Orange victims in the country. Vietnamese studies suggest that birth defects, miscarriages, neurological disorders and cancers are high in areas that were sprayed.

The post-Vietnam attitude of the United States contrasts sharply with U.S. actions after the defeat of Nazi Germany in 1945. Under the Marshall Plan, the United States helped rebuild Germany as well as 14 other war-damaged countries in Europe. The four-year price tag was $13 billion. And the dollar in those days was worth many times its current value. Japan also benefited from a generous postwar reconstruction plan.

Now the U.S. taxpayer faces back-to-back reconstruction assignments, Iraq coming on the heels of Afghanistan.

Some Afghans are becoming impatient with the results 17 months after the U.S. military deposed the Taliban regime.

"What was promised to Afghans with the collapse of the Taliban was a new life of hope and change. But what was delivered? Nothing."

That was the recent assessment of Ahmed Wali Karzai, the brother of Afghan President Hamid Karzai and his representative in Kandahar.