Donors Pledge to Keep Up Afghan Aid

The major contributors to Afghanistan’s reconstruction declared Wednesday that they would continue to pour aid into the country, yet stopped short of making the kind of long-term financial commitments sought by the nation’s beleaguered government.

More than two years after the Taliban was ousted from power, major donor nations meeting here pledged more than $4.4 billion to the cause and promised, one after another, that they would not allow Afghanistan to slide further into violence and disorder.

“A peaceful Afghanistan is an anchor for political stability in the region and a sign of hope for us all,” said German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder, whose government was a principal sponsor and organizer of the event.

Most of the pledges had been previously announced, including $2.3 billion from the United States. But Japan disclosed Wednesday that it would give $400 million over the next two years, bringing its total contribution since 2001 to more than $1 billion.

In addition, through a last-minute round of side deals, countries chipped in $63 million needed to take the first steps toward holding national elections planned for September, said Mark Malloch Brown, administrator of the United Nations Development Program. The United States pledged $25 million toward that effort.

With reconstruction moving forward slowly and Afghanistan beset by violence, the government of President Hamid Karzai wanted to use the conference to nail down as many aid commitments as possible for as long as possible.

The Afghans offered a new report that said the country would need $28 billion over the next seven years and that the government could increase its absorption of aid from $2 billion a year to $4 billion.

The Afghans wanted “to get as much donor political will locked in as possible,” Malloch Brown said.

U.S. officials said donors pledged $8 billion of the $12 billion that Afghanistan was seeking for expenses over the next three fiscal years. Yet many governments are barred from committing expenditures for more than one or two years ahead of time. It was clear that the conference would raise nowhere near the money sought for the next seven years.

The lead sponsors of the event sought to stiffen the resolve of their contributors by warning of what would follow if international backers pulled out.

Karzai warned that drugs were “undermining the very existence of the Afghan state.” He said the problem was “too big for us to handle alone.” Malloch Brown said the choices were for Afghanistan to move forward gradually to modest prosperity or to “lapse back into a kind of narco-terrorist state.”

Afghanistan is unusually dependent on foreign aid, even by the standards of poor countries. The $200 million the government raises at home to fund its work represents only a fraction of expected annual spending of more than $4 billion.

Officials portrayed the meeting as a success.

U.S. Secretary of State Colin L. Powell said the presence of 65 delegations at the session “testifies to the strength of support within the world community for the people of Afghanistan, as they build a future of freedom, prosperity and security.” He said the aid plan reached in Bonn in 2001 “is on track.”

But representatives of some private organizations warned that aid so far had been far short of what was needed.

Barnett Rubin of the Center on International Cooperation at New York University said that “the low level of funding for the reconstruction of Afghanistan remains astonishing, given the importance with which major nations claim to regard it, and the consequences of the previous neglect of that country.”

Also discussed at Wednesday’s meeting were plans to expand the presence of foreign troops to provide security in the country. So far, they are largely limited to the areas around Kabul, the capital, and Kunduz, but plans call for them to ultimately disperse to 17 locations.

Malloch Brown, however, said he was concerned that Western governments remained wary of putting more troops in harm’s way.

He said development officials were worried that they did not yet see evidence that “the troops are getting out in sufficient force and sufficient vigor to guarantee nationwide security.”