Unable to persuade key neighbor Pakistan to reconsider its boycott of an international gathering on Afghanistan’s future, the United States and conference organisers said they would go ahead with promises of continued aid for Afghanistan after most foreign forces leave the country.
Participants including US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon vowed to stand by Afghanistan as it struggles to establish security and stability. Warning that the Taliban could make a comeback and take over Afghanistan again, the country’s President Hamid Karzai said, “If we lose this fight, we are threatened with a return to a situation like that before September 11, 2001.” He told around 1,000 delegates for the one-day meeting that his government would battle corruption and work toward national reconciliation but it needed firm international backing. “We will need your steadfast support for at least another decade” after the troops pull out, he said.
Karzai insisted he remained open to talks. “The political process will continue to be inclusive, open to Taliban and other militants who denounce violence, break ties with international terrorism, accept the Afghan constitution and defend peaceful life,” he said. Karzai said he was still prepared to work with Pakistan despite its boycott and urged Islamabad to stop giving sanctuary to Taliban insurgents. He said Pakistan had missed a good opportunity to discuss its own issues and the future of Afghanistan by not attending the Bonn conference. “But it will not stop us from cooperating together,” he said. The meeting came 10 years after another conference here put an interim Afghan government under Karzai in place after US-led troops ousted the Taliban in the wake of the September 11 attacks. However, Pakistan and the Taliban – both seen as pivotal to any end to the bloody strife in Afghanistan a decade on – decided to stay away from Bonn, dampening already modest hopes for real progress.
The event’s host, German Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle, insisted there would be no rush to the exit. “We send a clear message to the people of Afghanistan: we will not leave you alone, you will not be abandoned,” he said,pledging help in comments echoed by Merkel in a brief address. Merkel told the conference that reconciliation – a term used to refer to talks among different Afghan groups as well as with insurgents – remained an important part of efforts to stabilise Afghanistan. “The political process will have great importance in future, this is the place where the questions of reconciliation and power sharing must be solved in a way that includes all parts and ethnic groups of the society,” she said.
“We can help Afghanistan in this process, we can provide our experience, but we can’t solve the problem, it is only the Afghans who can do this.”
US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton announced the US was ending a freeze on hundreds of millions of dollars in development funds due to financial reforms by Kabul.
Clinton also lamented Pakistan’s boycott of the conference in her speech, saying it was “unfortunate”, but Islamabad still had a crucial role to play.
“The entire region has a stake in Afghanistan’s future and much to lose if the country again becomes a source of terrorism and instability — and that is why we would of course have benefited from Pakistan’s contribution to this conference,” she said.
“Therefore, a comprehensive and effective strategy that maximises the resources and their use should be worked out,” she said, adding that the United States is prepared to support the Afghan transition in the long course ahead.
“In return, the Afghans must also carry out reforms, eradicating the rampant corruption and fortifying their legal system,” Hillary said.
“We continue to believe that Pakistan has a crucial role to play,” she told reporters later, adding that she was encouraged by remarks by a Pakistani government official that it would continue cooperation, including in the fight against terrorism.
“I think it was unfortunate that they did not participate,” Clinton told a press conference on the sidelines of the conference, adding it would have been better if the Pakistanis had attended.
“We regret the choice that they made because today’s conference was an important milestone toward the kind of security and stability that is important for Pakistan as well as for Afghanistan,” she said. Hillary said no one in the world was more concerned than the US to know what actually happened in recent border incident which left 24 Pakistani soldiers dead.
She said that the US wanted to know the facts into the NATO raid.
The Taliban, leaders of the country’s brutal, decade-long insurgency, have also stayed away, saying the meeting will “further ensnare Afghanistan into the flames of occupation”.
The West’s embryonic contacts with the Taliban have so far yielded little, and with the government in Kabul unable to provide security and economic development, the risk is that the withdrawal of foreign troops will plunge Afghanistan back into civil war. Renewed strife might also stir more violence over the border in Pakistan, fighting its own Islamist insurgency.
Iran’s growing confrontation with the West over its nuclear programme could also bleed into the war in Afghanistan.
Iranian Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi reiterated Iran’s opposition to the US keeping some forces in Afghanistan after 2014.
“Certain Western countries seek to extend their military presence in Afghanistan beyond 2014 by maintaining their military bases there. We deem such an approach to be contradictory to efforts to sustain stability and security in Afghanistan,” he told the conference.
The foreign military presence in Afghanistan over the past 10 years had failed to uproot terrorism and had actually made the problem worse, Salehi said.
Indian Foreign Minister SM Krishna, whose country became the first to sign a strategic partnership agreement with Afghanistan – much to the irritation of Pakistan – pledged India would keep up its heavy investment in a country whose mineral wealth and trade routes made it “a land of opportunity”. British Foreign Secretary William Hague reiterated that any settlement with insurgents would require them to renounce violence, sever ties with al Qaeda and respect the Afghan constitution – “end conditions” which some argue effectively close the door to talks by determining the outcome in advance.
United Nations’ Secretary General Ban Ki Moon said all neighbouring countries, including Pakistan and Iran, had to play their progressive role for Afghan peace process, adding that issues could be resolved by taking Afghan people into confidence. Ban said the solution to Afghan issues was not easy and Afghans had understood that peace could only possible through negotiation, adding that education could bring betterment in Afghanistan and “we have to work more in this regard”.
Ban called Pakistan’s decision to boycott the conference “regrettable”, but not attending the crucial moot was its sovereign decision.
“Pakistan is one of the key countries in the region who can help peace and stability in Afghanistan and thus it would have been much better if Pakistan was present in the conference,” he said in a statement.
With peace stalled, Afghanistan looks for more foreign aid
