Even in a global financial crisis, the world cannot afford to skimp on its obligations to Afghanistan, which wants to double the size of its army but will never be able to pay for it, US Defense Secretary Robert Gates says.
Gates said some characterizations of backsliding in the seven-year-old Afghan war were too dire, but he said violence was up.
Nations with fighting forces in Afghanistan and those without must respond, Gates said on Friday after a day of strategy talks with British, Canadian and other defense ministers with troops fighting alongside Americans in Afghanistan’s closely contested south.
The US has asked Japan and NATO allies that have refused to send troops to Afghanistan to fund an estimated US$17 billion doubling of the Afghan army to 134,000 soldiers over five years.
Gates has waged a nearly two-year campaign to recruit additional fighting forces from reluctant NATO allies, saying the military alliance would be weakened if some nations remained on the sidelines of the NATO fight in Afghanistan. He has seemed resigned, however, to accepting checks instead of troops from some European nations.
The global financial crisis should not let donor nations off the hook, Gates said.
“They’ll have to weigh the consequences of not doing it,” Gates said.
It is vastly cheaper to train and equip and Afghan soldier to fight in his own country than to send an American or other foreigner in to do the same thing, Gates said.
“There may be a period when you’ve got to do both. You’ve got to have your own forces there, but in the long term your interests in getting out are served by making a contribution to expanding the Afghan army.”
Speaking to reporters aboard his plane to Washington, Gates said that, unlike Iraq, Afghanistan would be dependent on handouts for years.
“Iraqi government revenues this year will be about US$70 billion,” Gates said. “Afghan government revenues will be about US$700 million. They will never be able to sustain this force.”
In Afghanistan, a bomb blast in a market killed two people yesterday, authorities said, also reporting other unrest-linked violence that left three more civilians and 14 militants dead.
The bomb, attached to a vehicle, exploded in a vegetable market in the eastern city of Khost, provincial intelligence chief Colonel Mohammed Yaqob said.
A 15-year-old boy and a man were killed and 15 people wounded, Yaqob said. There was no claim of responsibility.
Taliban insurgents, meanwhile, said they had killed a district governor in another border province, Kunar, whose bullet-riddled body was found yesterday.
The governor of Marawara district, Ghais Haqmal, had been abducted by Taliban three months ago, and the militants had demanded the release of 50 of their jailed comrades in exchange for his life, authorities said.
Another Afghan man was shot dead by Taliban in the central province of Ghazni after being accused of spying for the government and its allies in the international military, a provincial government spokesman said.
However, “this person had no cooperation with the government and foreign forces and was a civilian,” Ismail Jahangir said.
One of the main spokesmen for the Taliban, Zabihullah Mujahid, said the man was killed on Friday after being interrogated by the militia’s leadership.
The US-led military supporting the Afghan government announced meanwhile that troops had killed 14 insurgents in operations in the southern provinces of Helmand and Farah in the past two days.
Troops had also shot and killed a civilian in Khost on Friday when the vehicle he was in came too close to a patrol and ignored warnings to stay away, the coalition said in a statement, expressing regret.
Soldiers are wary of suicide attacks and there have been several incidents in which civilians have been killed for approaching troops.
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