A showcase of unity amid discord in Afghanistan

A high-profile international conference Tuesday showcasing Western unity and purposefulness in Afghanistan offers a glimpse into rifts within the allied coalition and continuing tensions with the government of President Hamid Karzai.

The gathering here, bringing together dozens of top-level diplomats including Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, comes at a time when many of the countries that have poured troops and money into Afghanistan for nearly a decade are questioning the war’s overarching aims.

Despite the expected preponderance of upbeat statements, the one-day meeting highlights a longstanding source of friction between the government in Kabul and its Western patrons: whether foreign-aid funds are being frittered away and how much of the money earmarked for crucial assistance is siphoned off by corruption.

The Obama administration has chastised Karzai repeatedly for not cracking down on graft in his government — although such talks now tend to take place in private. Public scoldings of the Afghan leader earlier this year triggered an angry backlash whose effects are still being felt.

Leading Afghan officials believe the West needs to take greater responsibility for reining in crooked contractors and pay closer attention to Afghan opinions about foreign-inspired aid projects that sometimes are doomed from the start for cultural or logistical reasons.

Afghanistan intends to argue at the conference for more than doubling the amount of outside aid to be channeled through its own governmental institutions, from the current one-fifth to as much as half of the $13 billion spent annually on international assistance. Without such an increase, senior Afghan ministers say, their compatriots will not associate the government with progress.

“It’s absolutely important to us and the international community for its taxpayers’ money to be acknowledged to have an impact on the ground, to lead to sustainable development, to strengthen Afghanistan institutions,” Afghan Finance Minister Omar Zakhilwal told reporters in Kabul last week.

Western backers are likely to cede greater control over aid disbursement, with certain caveats, as a means of spurring Afghanistan to take greater responsibility for its own affairs. That in turn is envisioned as helping to set the stage for the drawdown of foreign troops.

Ordinary Afghans, who will be kept far from Tuesday’s VIP assemblage by rings of concrete barricades and a maze of police checkpoints, questioned whether all the verbiage would bring them any real benefits. This is the second high-level international gathering on Afghanistan in seven months, following a major conference in London in January. Few tangible results were felt from that, Afghans say.

“They talk and talk, but my life stays the same,” said Mohammed Azil, who sells vegetables amid the heat off the back of a wooden cart. “I try to feed my children, and I worry about someone in my family getting killed by a suicider.”

With about 60 nations taking part in the parley, together with delegations from a variety of nongovernmental international institutions, the gathering — held under the auspices of the United Nations and the Afghan government — is on a scale not attempted for many years in a capital that remains an active war zone.

A fresh reminder of that came Sunday when a suicide bomber killed three civilians with a powerful blast in a busy district of Kabul, despite tight security already put in place for the conference.

On the eve of the conference, thousands of police were patrolling the streets, and normally bustling areas were all but deserted.

Although all parties acknowledged the security risks of holding the meeting here, the head of the U.N. mission in Afghanistan, Staffan de Mistura, described the venue as “a sign of confidence in Afghanistan.”

The Taliban movement, which has been carrying out a campaign of assassinations of government officials and Afghans affiliated with foreign aid projects, offered a scornful take on the proceedings.

“They are mostly discussing issues that make no difference,” said spokesman Zabiullah Mujahid, reached by telephone. “The important issues are the occupation of Afghanistan and the presence of foreign forces here in Afghanistan.”

The conference aims to provide a jump-start to “reintegration” plans, meant to draw Taliban foot soldiers away from the fight through jobs and other incentives. After months of relative inaction, the Karzai government will tout its formal plans for the program, to be bankrolled largely by donor countries.

But disagreement remains on the delicate question of contacts with senior insurgent leaders. Diplomats privately express concerns that Karzai is more ready to make concessions to the Taliban than his Western allies would like.

Recent months have brought much less decisive progress on the battlefield than Western military leaders had hoped for at the start of the year — an important factor in gauging the climate for any talks with the Taliban, since the insurgents are considered unlikely to come to the bargaining table as long as they feel they have the upper hand.

It has already been a deadly summer, with June’s Western military death toll the highest of the war to date. That trend appears likely to continue; two more American soldiers were killed Monday in separate explosions in Afghanistan’s south, and six Afghan police officers died in a blast in restive Kandahar province.

The number of casualties has had a powerful influence on public opinion in key North American Treaty Organization troop-contributing nations such as Britain and Canada.

Even while talking up the significance of Tuesday’s meeting, some senior U.S. officials sought to damp any expectation of some dramatic breakthrough.

“No one conference is going to end the war,” special regional envoy Richard C. Holbrooke told reporters in Washington last week. “This is a difficult, arduous process.”

laura.king@latimes.com