ABSTRACT
On 22 February 2003, President Hamid Karzai stated that ‘achieving DDR answers the deepest aspirations of the Afghan people, who are eager to move away from war and violence toward a peaceful, safe and civil society’ (Karzai, 2003). President Karzai was speaking at a conference organized in Tokyo by the government of Japan to provide a forum for the Afghan government to present its plans to reform the security sector. Japan assumed a prominent role in the process after accepting the status of lead donor for DDR in spring 2002 at a G8 security donor meeting held in Geneva. At the Tokyo conference – attended by more than 30 donor countries, the European Union and 12 international organizations – the Afghan New Beginnings Programme (ANBP) was first introduced, a DDR project to be implemented by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) on behalf of the Afghan government.
