Afghanistan's president implored international donors for their continued support Saturday, saying the "wounded country" faced a host of security and economic challenges while reiterating his vision of self-reliance after 40 years of war. Donors have pledged billions of dollars over the past decade to reconstruct the war-torn country, convulsed by a 14-year Taliban insurgency and seething with unemployment.
But a lot of that money has been lost to corruption, which permeates nearly every public institution, hobbling development and sapping already bare state coffers. "Rebuilding Afghanistan is going to be a long-term endeavour," President Ashraf Ghani said at a conference of donors in Kabul attended by Western delegates and non-governmental organisations.
"Forty years of conflict have destroyed... a vast amount of material and lives... We need to rebuild the country on a foundation that will yield the prosperity and trade that is Afghanistan's birthright," he said. The donor meeting was a follow-up to the December 2014 conference in London, where Ghani first outlined his vision for a self-reliant Afghanistan.
Ghani said Saturday that Afghanistan is advancing along the path of self-reliance, but stressed to donors that "we continue to need our partnership so that by the end of the transformation decade we will no longer be dependent on aid". "Afghanistan is a wounded country. Widespread unemployment, a violent insurgency, and the advance of extremism across the region are increasing the likelihood that (our) economic reform agenda will be undone by political unrest," he said.
"Socially, we have five million refugees. Economically, we are a country that has $400 million in exports and $8-12 billion in imports. Even if there were no Taliban ravaging the countryside, our trade imbalances would condemn us to perpetual poverty." The meeting came after US-led Nato forces ended their combat mission in December, with a 13,000-strong residual force remaining in the country for training and counter-terrorism operations.
Since the collapse of the Taliban regime in 2001, international donor conferences have been held in Tokyo, London and Paris, with pledges totalling tens of billions of dollars. Human Rights Watch urged donors ahead of the conference to press the Afghan government on the persistent human rights problem.
"Afghan officials and foreign donors need to put human rights front-and-centre in all discussions of ongoing and future support for the Afghan government," said the group's deputy Asia director Phelim Kine. "They should recognise that human rights gains since 2001 remain extremely fragile and in some areas have reversed, putting at risk the rights of all Afghans, particularly women."