Afghans win aid, military pledges at conference
(China Daily)
Updated: 2006-02-01 08:10

LONDON: Afghanistan received promises of economic and military support from Western nations at a conference in London yesterday in return for pledges to fight corruption and the illegal opium trade.

Four years after the US-backed campaign which ousted the Taliban hardline Islamists, Afghanistan remains one of the world's poorest countries and security is a major obstacle to development.

US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said the transformation of Afghanistan from tyranny to democracy was a monumental achievement and an example of what the world could achieve if it worked together.

But a Taliban leader condemned the gathering as an "American drama and stage show" and warned that the Taliban would continue attacking Western forces in the country.

Rice said US President George W. Bush would seek approval for an extra US$1.1 billion of aid for the Afghan people in the next year on top of annual US aid to the country of nearly US$6 billion and British Prime Minister Tony Blair pledged 500 million pounds (US$885 million) over the next three years.

"The struggle of the Afghan people to have democracy and stability is representative of the struggle worldwide," Blair told the conference.

But a former Afghan minister said billions of dollars of aid that have poured into the country have done little to improve people's lives, and that sweeping personnel changes in government and aid agencies were needed.

"The people are asking themselves 'if these billions of dollars have been donated, which of our pains have they remedied, what ointment has been put on our wounds,'" former Planning Minister Ramazan Bashardost said in Kabul.

Tackling drugs

Fifty-one countries, 12 international bodies and 17 observers attended the two-day conference.

The United States helped Afghan forces oust the Taliban in 2001 after they refused to hand over al-Qaida leaders responsible for the September 11 attacks that killed nearly 3,000 people in New York and Washington.

The country now has a constitution, an elected president and a parliament despite violence in the south and east where 18,000 US troops are helping government forces fight insurgents.

Mullah Abdullah Akhund, deputy to Taliban leader Mullah Mohammad Omar and a former Taliban defence minister, said Afghans "should not attach big hopes to the London conference," which he said was an "American drama and stage show."

"In Afghanistan, armed jihadi and suicide attacks against America, Britain and their agents will continue," he said on satellite telephone from an undisclosed location.

NATO is preparing to double the size of its force in Afghanistan to 18,000 from 9,000 and expand into the dangerous south while the United States cuts its troop levels. Britain announced last week it would send an additional 3,300 troops.

Afghanistan is the world's biggest source of illicit opium and its refined heroin accounts for about 87 per cent of global supply. Many farmers depend on revenue from the drug.

President Hamid Karzai told BBC radio yesterday it would take 10 to 15 years to develop alternative sources of income for farmers and eliminate opium from Afghanistan.

(China Daily 02/01/2006 page10)