With participating countries and organizations committed to making positive contributions to Afghan recovery and reconstruction, the Tokyo conference took a major step toward bringing civility and democracy to the war-ravaged country. Sixty-one nations and 21 international organizations pledged grants and loans that are expected to total $1.8 billion in the first year, and $4.5 billion over a five-year period.

This amount of aid will cover the needs of Afghanistan's interim administration, including the cost of running the government and launching quick-impact recovery programs, which Prime Minister Hamid Karzai estimates will amount to between $1.8 billion and $2 billion in the initial year. The international community's enthusiasm to defuse one of the world's chronic trouble spots through concerted endeavors at nation-building has produced the desired results.

However, the real challenge -- rebuilding a country devastated by more than two decades of war -- remains ahead, and is daunting indeed. The destruction that followed the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks on the United States was only part of the Afghan crisis, which began with the Soviet invasion of that country in December 1979. Soviet forces pulled out in 1989, but the ensuing civil war plunged Afghanistan into further turmoil. The situation worsened with the emergence, in 1995, of the Taliban, the fundamentalist Islamic militia that went on to provide a haven for Osama bin Laden, the suspected mastermind behind the Sept. 11 attacks, and his al-Qaeda terrorist network.