The Hague gets ready for 'big tent meeting'

Next week, The Hague will be the venue for the international Afghanistan conference. A nuisance for local residents, but a feather in the cap of the self-proclaimed world capital of peace and justice.

The two empty houses opposite the World Forum in The Hague are no longer for rent. The risk that ill-intentioned people might take up residence there is too important. A scheduled performance of the popular Dutch musical Ciske de Rat has been postponed. Large hotels in the area have been emptied out.

'Big tent meeting'

One week from now, on March 31, the World Forum will host an international conference about the future of Afghanistan. All the main players will be there: Afghan president Hamid Karzai, UN secretary-general Ban Ki-moon, US secretary of state Hillary Clinton, foreign ministers from 72 countries and representatives from Nato, the European Union, the World Bank and many others.

The conference is scheduled to start at 10.45 a.m. and less then seven hours later, at 5.30 p.m., everything is supposed to be over. The estimated cost? Two to three million euros, courtesy of the host country, the Netherlands.

Michiel Middendorf, director of the World Forum, is excited. "This only happens every thirty years or so. For us, this is like playing in the Champions League finals. Obviously, we would like to win." The mayor of The Hague, former foreign minister Jozias Van Aartsen, is equally proud. "A conference like this is what The Hague is all about," he says.

It all happened very fast. It was only two weeks ago that Nato secretary-general Jaap de Hoop Scheffer announced what he called 'a big tent meeting' about Afghanistan. Yet, the idea for a broad Afghanistan conference began to brew in several capitals two months ago.

Nato had been looking for some time for a chance to dispel the notion that the difficult Afghanistan operation is a strictly military affair. Dutch foreign minister Maxime Verhagen first suggested a conference to his Australian colleague Stephen Smith. Australia is not a Nato member but it has troops in Uruzgan just like the Netherlands. At the same time, the new Obama administration was pushing for an international venue where it could promote its revised Afghanistan strategy.

Why the Netherlands?

Through diplomatic channels in Brussels and Washington, the Netherlands let it be known that it was prepared to organise such a conference. On March 4, on the eve of a meeting of the Nato foreign ministers in Brussels, the US state department informed the Dutch embassy in Washington that the Afghanistan conference could be held on March 31 in The Hague.

Why the Netherlands? "Because it is a solid ally who is involved in everything that has to happen in Afghanistan," US assistant secretary of state Richard Boucher told this newspaper.

At the Nato summit in Brussels, Germany and Spain too backed the Netherlands as the venue for the conference. A few hours after De Hoop Scheffer's announcement, the Dutch foreign ministry had already asked the city of The Hague if it was capable of organising such a large conference in so little time. A similar request went to Amsterdam, Noordwijk and Maastricht - all towns with previous experience in organising international political conferences.

In The Hague, local officials met the very next day to discuss the request. Everybody agreed that this was something The Hague should do. The seat of the Dutch government is also home to 150 international organisations, including the International Court of Justice and the International Criminal Court. The city likes to present itself as the world capital of justice and peace. On Sunday night, the so-called bid-book was ready: an eight-page glossy leaflet with photographs of the recently renovated World Forum, some of The Hague's other attractions and flattering descriptions of its merits.

Meanwhile, the home ministry had created a task force headed by Johan van der Werff, the number two at the Dutch Nato delegation in Brussels. Van der Werff coordinated the Dutch EU presidency in 2004, and was dispatched to The Hague for the Afghanistan conference. The final decision to give the conference to The Hague came on Monday.

Nuisance

"It is not the biggest event we have organised but it is the most high-profile," says World Forum director Michiel Middendorf. Another event at the World Forum, the annual The Hague Jazz festival, draws 10,000 visitors every night; the Afghanistan conference is expected to have some 2,000 participants, half of them journalists.

One big difference with a jazz festival is the security. Little is known about the security measures around the Afghanistan conference; no public statements have been made. Apart from the local police, there will be an important role for the DKDB, which specialises in close protection of VIPs. The special intervention squad DSI will be on call. The internal and external intelligence services are already working overtime, screening everybody who has business in and around the conference building. The national coordinator for anti-terrorism (NCTb) will make a risk assessment. The secret service (AIVD) will be discreetly present.

At street level, a number of roads near the World Forum will be closed off and manholes and garbage cans sealed. Security on the ground, including searching bags, has been partly outsourced to Trigion, a private security firm. The city has asked people to leave their cars at home on March 31 and use public transportation instead.

People living in the Statenkwartier near the World Forum can expect some nuisance. Mayor Van Aartsen, who lives in the Statenkwartier himself, was expected to talk to local residents this Tuesday night. The Afghanistan conference will not go unnoticed, Van Aartsen said, but it should not be a major nuisance.