Reuters, Brussels :
World powers will convene on Brussels on Tuesday to raise billions more dollars for Afghanistan to keep the country running until 2020, but the bigger prize would be a peace deal after almost four decades of conflict.
Fifteen years after the US invasion that ousted Taliban rulers harbouring terrorists behind the attacks on New York and Washington, Afghanistan remains reliant on international aid and faces a resurgent Taliban that threatens the country’s progress.
The two-day, EU-led donor conference in Brussels will seek fresh funds, despite Western public fatigue with their governments’ involvement in Afghanistan. Around 70 governments, including the foreign ministers of India, the United States, Russia, Iran and China are expected to attend.
“We’re buying four more years for Afghanistan,” said EU Special Representative for Afghanistan Franz-Michael Mellbin. But he stressed that the conference would also seek “a realistic timeline” for a new peace process.
“If we don’t achieve peace, it’s simply going to be extremely costly for the foreseeable future,” he told Reuters.
With 1.2 million Afghans forced to live as refugees in their own country and another 3 million living in Iran, Pakistan or seeking asylum in Europe, Afghanistan remains one of the world’s most dangerous countries, according to the Global Peace Index of the think-tank Institute for Economics and Peace.
Underlining Afghanistan’s precarious situation, Taliban fighters pushed into the centre of the northern city of Kunduz on Monday, a year after it briefly fell to the terrorists.
Long a crossroad for major powers, a prosperous Afghanistan could mean fewer refugees into Europe, an end to its status as a haven for terrorist groups hostile to the West and more effective police action against its billion-dollar narcotics trade.
For Moscow, which invaded in 1979 and spent a decade trying to control the country, the stability of the central Asian region is paramount. It has its largest foreign military base on the Afghan border, in Tajikistan, and an interest in keeping out the drugs that are trafficked and consumed in Russia.
