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  • Afghan govt wants donors to support its priorities

    Afghan govt wants donors to support its priorities
    By DEB RIECHMANN, Associated Press Writer Deb Riechmann, Associated Press Writer Sun Jul 18, 2:35 pm ET

    KABUL, Afghanistan – At an international conference on Tuesday, the Afghan government will ask donors to put 80 percent of aid money behind programs that the Afghans — not foreign capitals — deem important to development.

    It's a high-stakes meeting for the Kabul government, which wants to show the world leaders attending that it's making strides toward running its own affairs.

    Displaying a new streak of independence, Afghan officials are seeking to take the driver's seat to guide their nation out of three decades of conflict. Having spent billions and lost so many troops in nearly nine years of war, the international community remains uneasy about letting go of the wheel. Still, the U.S. and other donor nations believe that strengthening the Afghan government is the only way to end their military involvement in Afghanistan.

    "If after the Kabul Conference, we do not embark on the delivery of the things that we promised to deliver, then the donors as well as everybody else has every right to complain about us and tell us we are not serious," said Afghan Finance Minister Omar Zakhilwal.

    Staffan de Mistura, the top U.N. official in Afghanistan who is co-chairing the meeting, said there is much work to be done to increase the capacity of the Afghan government. "The ministers know it ... we all know it," he said. He called the conference a historic opportunity for the Afghan government to renew its commitment to the people of Afghanistan. "Realignment will not be overnight," he said. "It will be a process."

    Zakhilwal and other key Afghan ministers, working with sparse staffs, have spent weeks writing papers, outlining a plan of action with benchmarks for agriculture, reintegrating insurgents back into society and economic and social development.

    They are not only battling international skepticism, but must also prove themselves to the Afghan public who have little trust in their government.

    The conference is "useless," said Bissullah, a 43-year-old man from the north end of Kabul who goes by only one name. "I am not hopeful that this conference is going to benefit us in any way."

    Afghan lawmaker and political analyst Shukria Barekzai in the capital called the Kabul conference just another international meeting.

    "They are only speaking about nice and wonderful reports and big promises," she said. "We, as a nation, are tired of the lip service. We are tired of having more casualties. We are tired of living in war."

    Thousands of Afghan soldiers and police have been deployed to secure the capital during the one-day meeting. Officials worry that Tuesday's conference will draw a repeat of the violence seen at national peace conference in May when two militants were killed in a gunbattle with security forces and a rocket landed with a thud about 100 yards (meters) from the meeting site.

    Just before noon on Sunday, a suicide bombing near a market killed three civilians and wounded dozens. On Friday night, a combined international and Afghan commando force captured a Taliban bomb-making expert in the capital.

    Workers were busy sprucing up the city on Sunday, picking up trash, planting flowers and painting curbs red and white. A large banner has been hung near the airport to welcome U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, NATO Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and delegations from more than 60 nations plus a host of other diplomats and representatives from international organizations.

    The conference comes at a critical juncture in the war. NATO and Afghan forces are moving into areas controlled by the Taliban, and the insurgents are pushing back. June was the deadliest month for U.S. and international forces with the deaths of 103 service members, including 60 Americans.

    In his inaugural address in November 2009, Karzai said Afghan security forces should take the lead in ensuring security and stability across the country by the end of 2014.

    While those attending the conference are expected to adopt a paper that outlines how this turnover will occur, they were not expected to agree on where or exactly when Afghan forces would take over from coalition forces in certain provinces, said Mark Sedwill, the top civilian official with the NATO force.

    The NATO summit in November in Lisbon, Portugal, is the earliest that the Afghan and international community will be looking to identify provinces where transition can begin to occur sometime in 2011, Sedwill said.

    But readying Afghan security forces for such a handover is only part of the challenge in Afghanistan; the government must also take on more responsibility.

    Since the 2001 U.S.-led invasion that toppled the Taliban, 77 percent of the $29 billion in international aid spent in Afghanistan has been disbursed on projects with little or no input from Afghan government officials, according to the Afghan Ministry of Finance's 2009 donor financial review.

    While grateful for massive international aid, Afghan officials lament that money spent since 2001sometimes has financed temporary programs or unsustainable projects that will not make a long-term difference in the daily lives of Afghan citizens.

    At a January meeting in London, donor nations agreed to increase the amount of development aid delivered through the Afghan government to 50 percent in two years.

    On Tuesday, Karzai will ask the international community to restate this commitment and to align at least 80 percent of development and governance assistance over the next two years to a list of more than 20 national priority programs being introduced at the conference.

    In return, for getting foreign assistance directed to Afghan priorities, Karzai's government will pledge among other things to improve its financial management system, improve collection of revenues, fight corruption and adopt policies governing bulk cash transfers, according to a draft of the conference communique obtained by The Associated Press.

    "The Afghans have made progress in some areas, there are other areas where they are going to make commitments," said Sedwill, the top civilian NATO official. "There are other areas where all of us would have like to see more achieved. "

    But Sedwill said there are several areas that the international area has to address too, especially in the way it awards contracts, which both sides acknowledge has contributed to waste and corruption. The U.S. and NATO have set up anti-corruption task forces to address complaints that massive international contracts have led to too much subcontracting, which leaves little at the end for the Afghan people and undermines efforts to build up the Afghan government and private sector.
    Copyright © 2010 Yahoo! Inc. All rights reserv
    To sit down with these men and deal with them as the representatives of an enlightened and civilized people is to deride ones own dignity and to invite the disaster of their treachery - General Matthew Ridgway

  • #2
    Clinton in Afghanistan to refine war aims
    By MATTHEW LEE, Associated Press Writer Matthew Lee, Associated Press Writer 1 hr 13 mins ago

    KABUL, Afghanistan – Struggling to overcome growing concern about the course of the war in Afghanistan, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said Monday she detected a subtle but favorable shift in public opinion in key ally Pakistan as she pressed Afghan leaders on reform and security improvements.

    Arriving in Kabul to attend an international conference on Afghanistan after two days of talks in Islamabad, Clinton said she would urge Afghan President Hamid Karzai to follow through with pledges to improve governance and fight corruption. But she stressed that the U.S. and its partners had to police themselves in those areas too.

    Aboard her plane from Pakistan, Clinton said U.S. efforts to convince deeply skeptical Pakistanis that American interest in their country extends beyond the fight against Islamist militants appeared to be gaining ground. To boost that shift, she announced a raft of new aid projects worth $500 million in Islamabad.

    The projects, which include hospitals and new dams for badly needed electricity, are part of a $7.5 billion aid effort to win over Pakistanis suspicious about Washington's goals there and in neighboring Afghanistan, where U.S. troops are being killed in ever greater numbers in an insurgency with roots in Pakistan.

    Mistrust over U.S. intentions in Pakistan is in part due to Washington's decision to turn away from the nuclear-armed country after enlisting its support to defeat the Soviets in Afghanistan in the 1980s.

    "Of course there is a legacy of suspicion that we inherited," she told reporters in Islamabad. "It is not going to be eliminated overnight."

    But after a town hall meeting with Pakistani students, academics and businesspeople, Clinton said she noticed a slight change in opinion from a her last trip to Pakistan in October when she was hit by a barrage of intense and hostile questions at a similar event. She said Pakistani officials she had spoken with had noticed it, too.

    "I don't want to overstate this but (the Pakistani officials) all said we really believe that the people are understanding that the United States wants to be a real partner to us and that it's not just killing terrorists," she told reporters traveling with her to an international conference in Afghanistan.

    "I happen to think one of the best ways to kill terrorists is by being a good partner and by creating an atmosphere in which people have trust and confidence that what you're doing is in their best interests as well," she said. "Therefore, they are prepared to support their own government in those efforts. I could feel a change."

    As she flew to Afghanistan, Clinton said the Kabul Conference — the largest hosted by the country in decades that is to be attended by senior officials from 60 countries — "is going to show more Afghan ownership and leadership, which is something we've been pushing."

    She said she is concerned about reports of diversions of U.S. aid, but said the problem isn't just with the Afghan government. She noted that recent reports of U.S. contractors paying protection money to militants have prompted concern in Congress and led one lawmaker to put a hold on about $4 billion in assistance to Afghanistan.

    "We also have to take our hard look at ourselves because it is very clear our presence, all of our contracting, has fed that problem," she said. "This is not just an Afghan problem, it's an international issue. We have to do a better job of trying to more carefully channel and monitor our own aid."

    Before meeting Karzai on the eve of the conference, Clinton said the U.S. is "pressing the Afghan government at all levels to be more accountable, to go after corruption," but that the U.S. also had a responsibility to improve management of its programs.

    With anxiety rising about President Barack Obama's plan to begin withdrawing U.S. troops from Afghanistan next year, Clinton also warned Afghan officials against trying to make peace with Taliban, al-Qaida and other militants considered irreconcilable. Those re-entering society must lay down their arms and accept Afghanistan's constitution, she said.

    "We would strongly advise our friends in Afghanistan to deal with those who are committed to a peaceful future where their ideas can compete in the political arena through the ballot box, not through the force of arms," Clinton said in Islamabad.

    Many analysts believe Pakistan is reluctant to target Afghan Taliban militants in the country with whom it has historical ties because they could be useful allies in Afghanistan after international forces withdraw.

    Pakistan has shown more interest in supporting Afghanistan's push to reconcile with Afghan Taliban rather than fight them, a tactic the U.S. believes has little chance of succeeding until the militants' momentum on the battlefield is reversed.

    Copyright © 2010 Yahoo! Inc. All rights reserved.
    To sit down with these men and deal with them as the representatives of an enlightened and civilized people is to deride ones own dignity and to invite the disaster of their treachery - General Matthew Ridgway

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