[BITList] They’ll Need Aid for Years - effing unbelievable

[x50type at cox.net]

      Do you get the feeling that Karzai & Co are playing us for suckers?

      As the months have passed, the tempo of the war has shown little sign of winding down – could that be because its in the best interests of K&Co to keep it going?

      According to the Center for Defense Information, the estimated cost of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan will reach $1.29 trillion by the end of fiscal year 2011 – eh!.  

      And I thought the USA was cutting back on wasteful expenditure, etc. [some one didn’t get the email!]
      But isn’t it good to know that now 60% of afghans have mobile phones!

    ct

  At Conference, Afghans Say They’ll Need Aid for Years
  By STEVEN LEE MYERS and ROD NORDLAND

  BONN, Germany — As dozens of nations and organizations met here on Monday to plan a transition beyond the withdrawal of American and other international forces from Afghanistan in 2014, the Afghan government had a new deadline in mind: 2024. 

  President Hamid Karzai and other Afghan officials here called for political and military support for at least another decade — and for financial assistance until 2030. That would be nearly three decades after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, that led to the international intervention in Afghanistan. 
  While Mr. Karzai and others celebrated the strides made in Afghanistan since the fall of the Taliban in 2001 — 60 percent of Afghans now have mobile phones, he said, compared to none then — the conference highlighted the multiple challenges facing a fragile government undermined by corruption and threatened by a resilient insurgency. 

  “We will need your steadfast support for at least another decade,” Mr. Karzai said, addressing leaders here at a conference held on the 10th anniversary of the day the political foundation for a new government in Afghanistan was established in Bonn. 

  The conference, in the works for months, fell considerably short of the objectives officials once had for it. It was viewed as a milestone that would cement progress in ending the war, both politically as well as militarily, and lay the groundwork for a self-sustaining Afghan government. 

  Instead, as the months have passed, the tempo of the war has shown little sign of winding down, despite an optimistic assessment from NATO that it had reversed the momentum of the Taliban insurgents. 

  The efforts by the United States to negotiate a strategic agreement on relations with Afghanistan after 2014, like the one that now governs relations with Iraq, also have been complicated by nettlesome issues. Those include night raids by special forces and the transfer of prisoners to the Afghans in spite of their poor record on the treatment of detainees. The two countries cannot even agree on what to call the actual agreement. 

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