Afghanistan to need help until 2024
Financial support critical after troops go, Karzai says
BONN, Germany – Afghanistan will need the financial support of other countries for at least another decade beyond the 2014 departure of foreign troops, Afghan President Hamid Karzai said Monday at an international conference.
But the conference on the future of Afghanistan in Bonn was overshadowed by a public display of bad blood between the United States and Pakistan, the two nations with the greatest stake and say in making Afghanistan safe and solvent.
Pakistan boycotted the meeting to protest an apparently errant U.S. airstrike last month that killed 24 Pakistani soldiers. The strike furthered the perception in Pakistan that NATO and the U.S. are its true enemies, not the Taliban militants.
“It was unfortunate that they did not participate,” U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said. “I expect that Pakistan will be involved going forward and we expect them to play a constructive role.”
During the one-day conference, about 100 nations and international organizations, including the United Nations, jointly pledged political and financial long-term support for war-torn Afghanistan to prevent it from falling back into chaos or becoming a safe haven for terrorists.
“Together we have spent blood and treasure in fighting terrorism,” Karzai said. “Your continued solidarity, your commitment and support will be crucial so that we can consolidate our gains and continue to address the challenges that remain.”
Donor nations did not commit to specific figures but pledged that economic and other advances in Afghanistan since the ouster of the Taliban government in 2001 should be safeguarded with continued funding.
“We will need your steadfast support for at least another decade,” Karzai told the delegates, echoing a recent assessment by the World Bank that predicted a sharp budget shortfall as the 130,000 international troops gradually withdraw.
The United States announced it would free more than $650 million in support for small community-based development projects in Afghanistan, frozen because of financial irregularities in Afghanistan’s key Kabul Bank.
Afghanistan estimates it will need contributions of roughly $10 billion in 2015 and onward, slightly less than half the country’s annual gross national product, mostly because it won’t be able to pay for its security forces which are slated to increase to 352,000 personnel by the end of 2014.