Afghanistan

Karzai in Paris to ask donors for 32 billion euros in aid

Article published on the 2008-06-12 Latest update 2008-06-17 11:03 TU

Hamid Karzai.
(Photo: AFP)

Afghan President Hamid Karzai attends a special conference in Paris today to ask international donors for 50 billion dollars (32 billion euros) to finance his government’s Afghan National Development Strategy (ANDS). The strategy promises to fight poverty, combat warlordsim and drug production and build an independent army.

A donors’ conference in London two years ago produced pledges of 10.5 billion dollars (seven million euros) and US Assistant Secretary of State for South and Central Asian affairs, Richard Boucher, predicts that the conference will not ‘‘fill the 50 billion dollar tank’’ but will yield substantially more.

Delegations are present from 80 countries or international organisations and the conference will be addressed by Karzai, French President Nicolas Sarkozy and UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon.

The strategy promises to tackle the poverty which is the legacy of three decades of war and means that many Afghans still live on less than one dollar a day. Along with expanding education, the encouragement of the private sector is given a key role in this task. It also pledges to disarm illegal armed groups and combat the cultivation of poppy for heroin production.

Karzai’s critics claim that, despite previous promises to dislodge them, warlords and drug-traffickers still hold influential posts at regional and even national level. Afghanistan provides nearly 93 per cent of the world’s opium.

Pledges to improve the quality of justice and state administration may also prove difficult to meet. The strategy promises to have carried out a national census by the end of 2008 but the process was suspended this week because of practical and cultural barriers.

With large parts of the south of the country still racked by Taliban insurgency, seven years after the US-led invasion toppled the fundamentalist movement, the government is still struggling to establish a viable army and police force which can operate without the help of the Nato-led force, Isaf.

French President Nicolas Sarkozy pledged to add an extra batallion of French troops in the east of the country,  in response to continued requests from the US and Karzais' government for more troops from Nato members.

He also promised to increase French aid and, referring to efforts to fight Taliban insurgency, declaring: "We are not at war with the Afghans, we are with them against the terrorists".

The strategy aims to have 80,000 soldiers in the Afghan National Army by the end of 2010, with three-quarters of battalions and brigades capable of operating independently.