Getting Ready for a London Conference on Afghanistan

With ticket now in hand, yours truly is now set to fly to London for the London Conference on Afghanistan. The event, hosted by UK Foreign Secretary David Miliband, starring UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown, Afghan President Hamid Karzai, and UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, is the first in a three-part series meant to help build commitments for Afghanistan and re-cultivate faith in the Karzai Administration.

Once in London, I'll rendezvous with other humanitarian bloggers including Una Vera and Nasim Fekrat.  Together, across the blogoverse, we'll do our best not only to keep readers up to speed on the global effort to help Afghanistan and curb global terrorism. We'll also illuminate those earthy nuances which are so vital in political process but are so often left out of formal news coverage.

What do you, the readers of Change.org, want to learn from this conference and related human rights events next week?

Here's a starting list, but please add questions below and I'll do my best to ask them: Will the U.S. and NATO keep schedule for transferring power to the Afghan government, thus facilitating withdrawal? Will the Afghan government clean up its act, rid itself of corruption and rights violators, and win back support of the Afghan majority? What is NATO's back-up plan if goals are not met? What alternative solutions are they bringing or failing to bring to the effort?

What additional questions does this writer have?

Will the conference -- like so many U.S. state and congressional events -- consist almost entirely of Western suits or will there be a substantial Afghan presence? Similarly, will the talks address details or simply juggle more broad innocuous statements that don't nail anything down?

Could this conference achieve more in terms of peace and reconstruction for Afghanistan if chaired by a council of Afghan mothers and grandmothers?

Are we all going to perish in a global war of madness, fire, and pickle brine?

Will Hurley, Sun, Jack, Kate, and Sawyer save the island?

If two camels leave Mazar-e-Sharif, the first one walking three miles an hour, the second one trodding four miles an hour, then a vulture arrives with a coconut...oh, never mind.

Here's to wishing for a good Afghan caterer. An event like that would do well served with pumpkin dumplings, Kabuli pilau, and cardamom green tea, don't you think? And in all seriousness, let's hope the affair moves us closer to a better world.

Photo credit: US Army (Naray, Afghanistan)