AS President Hamid Karzai prepares for the first week of his second term in office he faces such a multitude of problems that Hercules’ cleansing of the Augean Stables begins to look like a piece of light housework. Not only does the Afghan leader face the usual problems thrown up by the fighting against Nato coalition forces – 16 people were killed by a suicide bomb in the western city of Farah on Friday – but he must now confront a rising tide of poverty, unemployment and corruption.

According to new evidence produced by the charity Oxfam, after three decades of war, Afghanistan remains one of the poorest and least-developed countries in the world. As the recent presidential elections demonstrated, it is also one of the most venal.

Unemployment stands at 40% with more than half the country living below the poverty line. In short, Afghanistan is hovering on the brink of a humanitarian disaster, and many western experts with a deep understanding of the country fear that hunger, disease and the ever-present grinding poverty are now almost as dangerous as

Taliban insurgents.

“Repairing this damage can’t be done overnight,” says Oxfam’s Grace Omer, the author of the report, who comes from Glasgow. “It will take a long time for the economic, social and psychological scars to heal.

“The international community has to recognise this, and to understand that Afghanistan needs more than military solutions. Afghanistan’s health services must improve and it needs better support for agriculture, infrastructure and schools.”

Behind Ms Omer’s indignation there is also the knowledge that turning around the problem is doubly difficult in a war zone. Fighting between the Taliban and coalition forces has been raging for eight years, casualties on both sides have been steadily mounting and the war has also bred a nihilism which makes positive action difficult, if not impossible.

A recent Nato report shows violence has soared by 60% this year alone and it also reveals that the majority of the casualties are now civilians. The deaths in action of Nato soldiers receive the bulk of the publicity in the western news media, but the Oxfam report contains worrying statistics about the untold Afghan civilian casualties.

“In 2008, an average of three Afghans were summarily executed by anti-Government elements every four days for any perceived association with the Afghan Government or international forces,” claim the report’s authors.

“The past three decades of war and disorder have had a devastating impact on the Afghan people. Millions have been killed, millions more have been forced to flee their homes and the country’s infrastructure and forests have all but been destroyed. The social fabric of the country is fractured and state institutions are fragile and weak.”

In compiling the report Oxfam spoke to 704 randomly selected Afghans in 14 provinces – a substantial achievement in itself, given the size and complexity of the country – and the findings should send a grim wake-up call to Mr Karzai and his new Government. They should also give Nato governments pause for thought, especially at a time when President Barack Obama is still struggling to find the best way ahead for the US-led coalition.

He and his policy advisers should find the report grim reading: one in ten of the Afghans interviewed by Oxfam has been imprisoned at least once; one in five has been tortured, in jail or by various armed groups; and a third of the tortured were women. Just under 50% of those questioned said their property had been destroyed; 76% had been forced to leave their homes.

Nearly half of the population lives below the poverty line and more than 250,000 remain displaced inside the country, while another three million refugees are still in Pakistan and Iran.

With statistics like those backing her arguments, Ms Omer and her colleagues are adamant that there has to be a sea-change in western policy. It is one thing to take on the Taliban at their own game, but it is quite another to find the money and infrastructure which will give the people of Afghanistan hope for the future. More than anything

else that is what is needed if disaster is to be avoided.

“Ordinary Afghans want peace and an end to conflict, and they want to see the root causes of fighting dealt with,” says Ms Omer.

“Poverty is driving the conflict. One man told us: ‘If people are jobless they are capable of anything.’ The international community must bear his words in mind and provide more

effective aid to help kick-start the Afghan economy.”

Before anything can be done, though, Mr Karzai has to address the massive problem of official corruption. The country is second only to Somalia in a listing of corrupt countries produced by the watchdog group Transparency International, and even British Prime Minister Gordon Brown had admitted that Afghanistan is “a byword for corruption”.

Following intensive pressure from Washington Mr Karzai was forced to place anti-corruption measures at the heart of his acceptance speech last Thursday and went out of his way to pledge that “those who spread corruption should be tried and prosecuted”.

It sounded good and Britain’s foreign secretary David Miliband went out of his way to stress that this was a “significant statement”, while US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton claimed that the speech was “an important new starting place”. But many present at the inauguration were astonished to see the Afghan leader was flanked by men who are believed to lie at the heart of the country’s problems.

One of them was Mohammad Qasim Fahim, the new Vice-President, who has been implicated by the US-based Human Rights Watch for his role in numerous abuses including murder, weapons and drugs-smuggling, and corruption. It has also not gone unnoticed that the President’s brother Ahmad Wali Karzai has been accused of numerous crimes including drug trafficking, although he denies the charges.

The first test for Mr Karzai will come when he decides what to do with revelations that five high-ranking ministers could soon be facing arrest for crimes including money-laundering and embezzlement and that there

is sufficient evidence to make the charges stick.

On the day before the presidential inauguration Attorney General Mohammed Ishaq Aloko revealed that “two of them are in the current cabinet and three are former ministers”.

All that is now required of the President is to sign off the papers to allow Mr Aloko to proceed with these high-profile cases before turning his

attention to similar charges involving lesser officials.

His task will be helped in the future once a new task force, modelled on the US Federal Bureau of Investigation, comes into being to tackle the country’s endemic corruption problems.

Much will depend on the calibre of his cabinet and Secretary of State Clinton has taken an early lead to try to persuade him to rid himself of those suspected of being warlords and to replace them with technocrats and those “with professional skills, with experience

and expertise who can actually do the work that is required.”

This will be no easy matter.

Over a million fake votes were cast in the recent election and despite Mr Karzai’s denials and his promised reforms, he will have to reward those who either supported him or who bought votes for him. As he begins his second term in office he must also know that Aghanistan is facing a tipping point as far as western involvement is concerned. Billions of dollars have been poured into the country, there is a Nato garrison of around 100,000 troops and the casualty rate for 2009 is fast approaching 500.

Against that background calls for withdrawal are becoming increasingly insistent in the west and there is growing support for the idea that Nato might have to cut its losses sooner rather than later. Although these have been resisted, with US Defence Secretary Robert Gates being the latest western leader to argue that it is too soon to put a timeline on any military drawdown, Mr Karzai has to act quickly and decisively if he is to retain the confidence of his western backers. Promises are no longer good enough: the time has come when he has to deliver.

“Just look at his shopping list and you can see the difficulties that lie ahead,” said a British diplomatic source. “He’s promised to stamp out corruption, address the opium trade, put national security in Afghan hands within five years and eradicate unemployment amongst young people who are potential Taliban supporters. By any standards it’s a mammoth task.”

If Mr Karzai hits some of his targets he will probably be able to retain the faith of Washington and London, and both Clinton and Miliband made it clear that they will be backing him, but it’s what happens inside his own country that counts.

As Oxfam’s unfailingly honest findings make clear, the battle has to be won among his own people, and so far the fight is not going the new Government’s way.

“Now the killers are in power,” claims one unnamed Afghan quoted in the report. “They are not thinking about what is best for the country and are only thinking about how they can benefit.”

Oxfam Report: The Cost of War: Afghan Experiences of Conflict 1978-2009

www.oxfam.org.uk/scotland