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The US hasn't forgotten Afghanistan
I am sick and tired of suggestions the US has forgotten and now I got proof that the US has very well kept an open eye.
Thumbs up to President Bush. Lets not forget about this country.
By Vernon Loeb and Glenn Kessler
Washington Post Staff Writers
Sunday, July 27, 2003; Page A01
The Bush administration will soon propose a $1 billion aid package for Afghanistan aimed at bolstering the government of President Hamid Karzai and countering criticism that U.S. officials have lost interest in rebuilding the country as their focus has shifted to postwar Iraq, senior administration officials said yesterday.
The $1 billion package, which more than triples the $300 million Afghanistan receives, represents new spending on Afghanistan and is designed to fund projects that can be completed within a year to have maximum impact on the lives of the Afghan people before scheduled elections in October 2004, the officials said, speaking on the condition of anonymity.
Among other things, the funds -- to be shifted from existing foreign and military aid accounts so as not to increase the deficit -- would go toward highway and school construction, other infrastructure initiatives, police training, beefed-up development of the Afghan national army, education projects and programs to help women enter the workforce, the officials said.
Defense policy officials, who developed the aid proposal, reasoned that accelerating ongoing initiatives and packaging them with new development programs is justified, in light of annual U.S. expenditures in Afghanistan of about $10 billion, most of which supports a military presence of 9,000 troops.
The $1 billion in aid resulted from "a comprehensive, strategic update on Afghanistan," said Douglas J. Feith, undersecretary of defense for policy, who confirmed accounts of the program provided by other officials but declined to provide further details.
"We noted that there's a lot that we're spending in Afghanistan and there's a lot at stake strategically," Feith said. "And we asked ourselves are we investing enough, given the expense of everything that we're doing, the importance of success and the benefits, strategic and financial, of completing our mission there sooner rather than later."
In a speech last October, President Bush noted that the United States and 60 other countries had pledged $4.5 billion in aid to Afghanistan over five years at a donors conference in Tokyo and said "America is delivering on our pledge; we're writing our checks. We're currently implementing more than $300 million worth of reconstruction and recovery projects."
The administration hopes to hold another donor conference as part of the September meeting of the World Trade Organization in Cancun, Mexico, with the expectation that the new $1 billion aid package will inspire other countries to increase their contributions as well, one senior administration official said.
As recently as May, Deputy Secretary of State Richard L. Armitage visited Kabul, the Afghan capital, and pledged that the United States remains committed to the reconstruction of Afghanistan, even as it pursues far larger postwar stability operations and reconstruction programs in Iraq.
Despite such promised support, the security situation in Afghanistan remains fragile, and the reconstruction of the country, devastated by decades of war, remains agonizingly slow. Numerous aid organizations, policy analysts and lawmakers have faulted the administration for its limited reconstruction efforts.
The administration, they argue, cannot adequately support Karzai's central government while maintaining de facto security agreements with a half dozen or more regional military commanders who maintain their own forces and often work to undermine Karzai's central authority.
Remnants of the Taliban, which ruled Afghanistan until the United States and its allies toppled it in late 2001, continue to harass U.S. bases and patrols in Afghanistan, often from across the border in Pakistan.
Afghanistan also remains the world's largest opium producer, with a growing drug trade and associated corruption threatening the country's reconstruction and clouding its ongoing debate over such basic issues as law and governance. The country is to hold a constitutional convention this fall, with elections planned for next year.
Although Congress authorized $3.3 billion in financial and military assistance to Afghanistan in the fall of 2001, a relatively small part of that amount has been spent. Testifying in June before the House International Relations Committee, Barnett R. Rubin, former special adviser to the United Nations on Afghanistan, said that $200 million in construction projects have been completed.
Rep. Henry J. Hyde (R-Ill.), the committee's chairman, commented a month earlier, during a hearing on postwar Iraq policy, that it "would be a horrendous mistake for us to invest the blood and treasure we have in getting rid of Saddam Hussein and then making the same mistake we made in Afghanistan, leaving the scene."
At the same hearing, Rep. William D. Delahunt (D-Mass.), said that "it's been about a year and a half [since the war] in Afghanistan and President Karzai only has control, maybe, of Kabul, and we still have warlords all over that particular country. And I dare say that reconstruction in Afghanistan is a mess at this point."
One senior defense official, who recently returned from Afghanistan, acknowledged that serious problems remain but said far greater progress has been made than most critics and many commentators acknowledge.
"There's been tremendous progress in every field," the official said. "The doom and gloom in the media, both on Iraq and Afghanistan, is talked about by everyone who comes back. They say the coverage is incredibly negative. People in Afghanistan making bricks and repairing their houses is not news anymore."
Training of the first 4,500 soldiers of the new Afghan army by U.S. military personnel has been "an incredible success story," the official said, explaining that Afghans who see the well-disciplined troops in action think they are Western peacekeepers and are elated to learn that they are native Afghan forces.
Washington Post Staff Writers
Sunday, July 27, 2003; Page A01
The Bush administration will soon propose a $1 billion aid package for Afghanistan aimed at bolstering the government of President Hamid Karzai and countering criticism that U.S. officials have lost interest in rebuilding the country as their focus has shifted to postwar Iraq, senior administration officials said yesterday.
The $1 billion package, which more than triples the $300 million Afghanistan receives, represents new spending on Afghanistan and is designed to fund projects that can be completed within a year to have maximum impact on the lives of the Afghan people before scheduled elections in October 2004, the officials said, speaking on the condition of anonymity.
Among other things, the funds -- to be shifted from existing foreign and military aid accounts so as not to increase the deficit -- would go toward highway and school construction, other infrastructure initiatives, police training, beefed-up development of the Afghan national army, education projects and programs to help women enter the workforce, the officials said.
Defense policy officials, who developed the aid proposal, reasoned that accelerating ongoing initiatives and packaging them with new development programs is justified, in light of annual U.S. expenditures in Afghanistan of about $10 billion, most of which supports a military presence of 9,000 troops.
The $1 billion in aid resulted from "a comprehensive, strategic update on Afghanistan," said Douglas J. Feith, undersecretary of defense for policy, who confirmed accounts of the program provided by other officials but declined to provide further details.
"We noted that there's a lot that we're spending in Afghanistan and there's a lot at stake strategically," Feith said. "And we asked ourselves are we investing enough, given the expense of everything that we're doing, the importance of success and the benefits, strategic and financial, of completing our mission there sooner rather than later."
In a speech last October, President Bush noted that the United States and 60 other countries had pledged $4.5 billion in aid to Afghanistan over five years at a donors conference in Tokyo and said "America is delivering on our pledge; we're writing our checks. We're currently implementing more than $300 million worth of reconstruction and recovery projects."
The administration hopes to hold another donor conference as part of the September meeting of the World Trade Organization in Cancun, Mexico, with the expectation that the new $1 billion aid package will inspire other countries to increase their contributions as well, one senior administration official said.
As recently as May, Deputy Secretary of State Richard L. Armitage visited Kabul, the Afghan capital, and pledged that the United States remains committed to the reconstruction of Afghanistan, even as it pursues far larger postwar stability operations and reconstruction programs in Iraq.
Despite such promised support, the security situation in Afghanistan remains fragile, and the reconstruction of the country, devastated by decades of war, remains agonizingly slow. Numerous aid organizations, policy analysts and lawmakers have faulted the administration for its limited reconstruction efforts.
The administration, they argue, cannot adequately support Karzai's central government while maintaining de facto security agreements with a half dozen or more regional military commanders who maintain their own forces and often work to undermine Karzai's central authority.
Remnants of the Taliban, which ruled Afghanistan until the United States and its allies toppled it in late 2001, continue to harass U.S. bases and patrols in Afghanistan, often from across the border in Pakistan.
Afghanistan also remains the world's largest opium producer, with a growing drug trade and associated corruption threatening the country's reconstruction and clouding its ongoing debate over such basic issues as law and governance. The country is to hold a constitutional convention this fall, with elections planned for next year.
Although Congress authorized $3.3 billion in financial and military assistance to Afghanistan in the fall of 2001, a relatively small part of that amount has been spent. Testifying in June before the House International Relations Committee, Barnett R. Rubin, former special adviser to the United Nations on Afghanistan, said that $200 million in construction projects have been completed.
Rep. Henry J. Hyde (R-Ill.), the committee's chairman, commented a month earlier, during a hearing on postwar Iraq policy, that it "would be a horrendous mistake for us to invest the blood and treasure we have in getting rid of Saddam Hussein and then making the same mistake we made in Afghanistan, leaving the scene."
At the same hearing, Rep. William D. Delahunt (D-Mass.), said that "it's been about a year and a half [since the war] in Afghanistan and President Karzai only has control, maybe, of Kabul, and we still have warlords all over that particular country. And I dare say that reconstruction in Afghanistan is a mess at this point."
One senior defense official, who recently returned from Afghanistan, acknowledged that serious problems remain but said far greater progress has been made than most critics and many commentators acknowledge.
"There's been tremendous progress in every field," the official said. "The doom and gloom in the media, both on Iraq and Afghanistan, is talked about by everyone who comes back. They say the coverage is incredibly negative. People in Afghanistan making bricks and repairing their houses is not news anymore."
Training of the first 4,500 soldiers of the new Afghan army by U.S. military personnel has been "an incredible success story," the official said, explaining that Afghans who see the well-disciplined troops in action think they are Western peacekeepers and are elated to learn that they are native Afghan forces.
Thumbs up to President Bush. Lets not forget about this country.
Who is currently in power in the capital? Aren't they fundamentalists as well?
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