Editor in Chief: Moh. Reza Huwaida Thursday, March 28th, 2024

Bonn Conference Seeks Plans for Afghanistan’s Future

Bonn Conference Seeks Plans for Afghanistan’s  Future

BERLIN - A global conference in Germany to discuss Afghanistan's future beyond 2014 comes as the country faces political instability, an enduring Taliban-led insurgency and possible financial collapse following the planned drawdown of international troops and foreign aid. About 100 countries and international organizations will be represented at the Monday gathering, with some 60 foreign ministers in attendance, among them U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton.

But one of the most important countries for Afghanistan's future, its eastern nuclear-armed neighbor Pakistan, said it will boycott the conference to protest last month's NATO air assault carried out from Afghan territory that killed 24 Pakistani soldiers.

Pakistan is seen as crucial player in the region because of its links and influence on insurgent groups that are battling Afghan government and foreign troops and that sometimes use Pakistan as a base for their operations.

The Bonn conference is expected to address the transfer of security responsibility from international forces to Afghan security forces over the next three years, long-term prospects for international aid and a possible political settlement with the Taliban.

"Our objective is a peaceful Afghanistan that will never again become a safe haven for international terrorism," German Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle said.
The U.S. had once hoped to use the Bonn gathering to announce news about the prospect for peace talks with the Taliban, but neither an Afghan nor a U.S. outreach effort has borne fruit.

The reconciliation efforts suffered a major setback after the September assassination of former Afghan President Burhanuddin Rabbani, who was leading the Afghan government's effort to broker peace with the insurgents.

But Washington and other partners are still trying to arrange an interim step toward talks — the opening of a Taliban diplomatic office where its representatives could conduct international business without fear of being arrested or killed. Such a deal would be a minor accomplishment for the Bonn gathering.

"Right now we don't know their address. We don't have a door," to knock on, said Afghanistan's ambassador to the U.S., Eklil Hakimi.
The final declaration of the Bonn conference is expected to outline broad principles and red lines for the political reconciliation with the Taliban, a project that several leading participants in the conference increasingly predict will outlast the NATO timeline for withdrawal in 2014.

The Bonn conference also seeks to agree on a set of "mutual binding commitments" under which Afghanistan would promise reforms and policy goals such as good governance, with donors and international organizations pledging long-term assistance in return to ensure the country's viability beyond 2014, a senior German diplomat said.

"It's about not repeating the mistakes of 1989, when the Soviet troops left and the West also forgot about Afghanistan," he said, referring to the bitter civil war that unfolded soon after the sudden withdrawal that was followed by the collapse of the Soviet Union.

Afghan President Hamid Karzai, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon will formally open the one-day conference of about 1,000 delegates. Afghanistan's western neighbor Iran also joins the conference, represented by Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi.

Afghan civil society groups are meeting on the sidelines, and some 5,000 protesters were out in Bonn's streets Saturday, urging an end to the Afghan war.
While the conference is nominally run by the Afghans and organized by Germany, the United States is the key participant because it's the country that has by far invested the most blood and treasure in Afghanistan since 2001.

The NATO coalition of 49 countries currently has 130,000 troops in the country, including about 72,000 Americans. The U.S. military footprint in Afghanistan, however, totals more than 101,600 because other American forces operate under a separate command. The vast majority are set to withdraw from Afghanistan over the next three years, leaving only a small force focused on training and counterterrorism missions beginning in 2015.

President Barack Obama announced this summer that 10,000 U.S. troops will come home by the end of the year. Another 23,000 will be pulled out by the end of September 2012. Those troops represent the 33,000 reinforcements that Obama sent in to help reverse the Taliban's momentum, leaving a force of about 68,000 U.S. forces, which will gradually shrink as the deadline for withdrawal approaches.

That deadline was set a year ago, by agreement between NATO and Afghanistan. There is little chance it will be extended. (AP)