Donors pledge $16 billion Afghan aid at Tokyo meet

TOKYO: Major donors pledged yesterday to give Afghanistan $16 billion in development aid through 2015 as they try to prevent it from sliding back into chaos when foreign troops leave, but demanded reforms to fight widespread corruption.
Donor fatigue and war weariness have taken their toll on how long the global community is willing to support Afghanistan and there are concerns about security following the withdrawal of most NATO troops in 2014 if financial backing is not secured.
“Afghanistan’s security cannot only be measured by the absence of war,” US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton told an international donors’ conference in Tokyo.
“It has to be measured by whether people have jobs and economic opportunity, whether they believe their government is serving their needs, whether political reconciliation proceeds and succeeds.” The roughly $4 billion in annual aid pledged at the meeting, attended by 80 countries and international organizations, fell short of the $6 billion a year the Afghan central bank has said will be needed to foster economic growth over the next decade.
Clinton and other donors stressed the importance of Afghanistan - one of the most corrupt nations in the world - taking aggressive action to fight graft and promote reforms.
“We have agreed that we need a different kind of long-term economic partnership, one built on Afghan progress in meeting its goals, in fighting corruption, in carrying out reform, and providing good governance,” Clinton said.
According to “mutual accountability” provisions in the final conference documents, as much as 20 percent of the aid could ultimately depend on Afghanistan meeting benchmarks on fighting corruption and other good governance measures.
However, a Japanese official said that it was up to each donor whether to make its aid contingent on such reforms and that the benchmarks could vary from country to country.
World Bank Managing Director Sri Mulyani Indrawati said the pressure was on the Afghan government to deliver reforms and ensure fair elections in 2014 in order to secure aid beyond the amount pledged in Tokyo.
“This is a fragile conflict state,” Indrawati said in an interview. “Three years is a very short time for a country to be able to build stable and competent institutions.” International donors provided $35 billion in aid to Afghanistan between 2001 and 2010, but the return on that investment has been mixed and the country remains one of the five poorest in the world.
President Hamid Karzai admits his government needs to do more to tackle corruption, but his critics say he is not doing enough, and some directly blame authorities for vast amounts of aid not reaching the right people.
While strides have been made in schooling children and improving access to health care, three-quarters of the 30 million Afghans are illiterate and the average person earns only about $530 a year, according to the World Bank.
The government has identified priority areas for economic development, including investment in agriculture and mining, which Western officials see as a possible engine for growth. Afghanistan is believed to have up to a trillion dollars’ worth of untapped mineral wealth.
Afghan Finance Minister Omar Zakhilwal said the Tokyo conference had shown aid donors were committed to the long haul. “Today’s event sends the strongest message to Afghan people that the international community will be with us in 2014, 2015, 2017, 2020 and beyond,” Zakhilwal told a news conference.
US officials gave no figure for their aid pledge but said the administration would ask Congress to keep assistance through 2017 “at or near” what it has given over the past decade.

Bombs, attacks kill 23
Meanwhile, roadside bombs and insurgent attacks killed 16 Afghan civilians, five policemen and two members of the US-led coalition in southern Afghanistan where militants are trying to reclaim territory, Afghan and NATO authorities said yesterday.
A surge in Afghan and coalition forces during the past two years routed Taleban fighters from many of their strongholds in the south, but the insurgents stepped up their attacks this summer to take back key areas.
The civilians, including women and children, were killed in a trio of blasts in Arghistan district, along Afghanistan’s border with Pakistan.
Kandahar province spokesman Ahmad Jawed Faisal said one bomb exploded when a minivan ran over it yesterday morning. A second went off when other civilians riding a tractor arrived to help the wounded. A third explosion occurred about two hours later when a civilian vehicle hit a roadside bomb in another area of the district, killing two women.
At least 10 other civilians were injured in the three blasts.

According to the United Nations, last year was the deadliest on record for civilians in the Afghan war, with 3,021 killed. The number of Afghan civilians killed dropped 36 percent in the first four months of this year compared with last year, but the UN says that too many are still being caught up in violence.
The policemen were killed while responding to a gun battle being waged against insurgents early Sunday at a checkpoint in the Musa Qala district of neighboring Helmand province.
Daoud Ahmadi, the spokesman in Helmand, said a group of Taleban fighters attacked the police checkpoint at about 3 a.m.
Afghan police called for reinforcements, but on the way, one of the police vehicles hit a roadside bomb, killing the five policemen.
Ahmadi says three other policemen were wounded in the four-hour gun battle against the insurgents. He says the bodies of 20 insurgents were recovered from the battlefield.
Separately, two NATO service members were killed in southern Afghanistan — one in a roadside bomb explosion on Saturday and the other during an insurgent attack on Sunday.
NATO did not disclose where the incidents occurred, or provide the nationalities of the soldiers killed.
So far this year, 225 NATO service members have been killed in Afghanistan.