2014 will be the year of withdrawal from Afghanistan

All these wishes seem so pious when we know the real value of Afghanistan… Which seems to arouse the obvious involvement of the talents of Hillary Clinton who is of all the fights...

The Kabul conference on Tuesday adopted a transition plan to stabilize the country.

Heart "Kabul process", necessary "transition" ... The international conference held Tuesday in the Afghan capital could well be summed up in one figure: 2014. That is the date on which the international community has the firm intention to hand over the keys security and stability of Afghanistan to its President, Hamid Karzai. It is on the viability of this deadline that more than 70 representatives of donor countries and international organizations have worked.

Never mind that some of them had to turn back because of the Taliban rocket attacks on Kabul airport. The date is engraved in stone, and the American Secretary of State was delighted, judging that “the transition in Afghanistan could not be postponed indefinitely”. After being diverted to Kazakhstan, the Danish foreign minister finally returned to Copenhagen. As for Ban Ki-moon, the UN Secretary General, he first landed on the American base of Bagram, before being conveyed by helicopter to Kabul.

Will 2014 be the year of withdrawal from Afghanistan? The final statement suggests so. "The international community supports the Afghan President's objective that the Afghan Security Forces should lead and conduct military operations in all provinces by the end of 2014", can be read in this document of about fifteen pages. But Anders Fogh Rasmussen, NATO's secretary general, warned on Tuesday that international troops will stay as long as necessary. "The transition will be gradual, based on a sober review of the political and security situation, so that it is irreversible," he said.

The gangrene of corruption

The communiqué also mentions the need for the Afghan government to fight corruption. Nothing new, except that this time, the international community is putting the forms. This was not always the case. End of March, Barack Obama had landed without warning in the middle of the night at the presidential palace in Kabul. The American president had then unceremoniously urged his host to put an end to the corruption that plagues Afghanistan. A few days later, a former UN official accused Karzai to be a "drug addict".

On Tuesday, donor countries pledged that at least 50% of international aid would go directly to the Afghan government. For years, Karzai has claimed that billions of dollars are wasted by NGOs or end up in the pockets of foreign contractors who win high-priced reconstruction contracts. “It is true that our presence and that of our companies have encouraged corruption (in Afghanistan), recognized Hillary Clinton. This is not a purely Afghan problem, but an international one. We need to be careful how we spend our aid. »

In short, today, here is Hamid Karzaï dressed in the finest attire. Not necessarily in the eyes of Afghans. Some - especially in the south - are ready to throw themselves into the arms of the Taliban; others believe that Karzai only represents himself. "He is the only president in the world who is against his own people," political analyst Haroun Mir said a few days ago in Kabul. Nor can he rely on the Afghan army, which is far from being loyal to him.”

source: Le Figaro