London Conference pledges to build up Afghan security forces, give Afghans greater control
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Afghan security forces were going to be massively built up, and those forces would take more of lead in fighting against the Taliban, said a communique issued by the International Conference on Afghanistan Thursday.
The participants "re-affirmed the goals of greater Afghan leadership, increased regional cooperation and more effective international partnership," the communique said.
"Together we are committed to make intensive efforts to ensure that the Afghan government is increasingly able to meet the needs of its people through developing its own institutions and resources."
One of the key points was that international involvement in Afghanistan would change "in favor of increasingly supporting Afghan leadership in the areas of security, development, governance and economic assistance," said the communique.
A number of Afghan provinces would be handed over wholly to Afghan control by late this year or the early next, it said.
The Afghan government said the Taliban militants who renounced their militancy would be invited to attend a peace jirga or conference it planned to hold later this year.
To encourage the Taliban militants to stop fighting and support the government of Afghan President Hamid Karzai, the conference endorsed a plan to set up a fund of at least 300 million U.S. dollars which will be used to support Taliban who renounce violence and al-Qaida.
The conference also endorsed a plan to provide Afghanistan with up to 1.6 billion dollars in debt relief from major creditors.
The conference was hailed as a move in the right direction by experts. "Karzai has made it very clear he wants the Afghan security forces to start taking over from the international forces," Christopher Langton, of the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London, told Xinhua.
The international forces are part of the problem in Afghanistan partly by not fully understanding the cultural issues and also by their use of tactics such as night raids, said the security analyst.
The Taliban are generally not corrupt and swift in upholding justice at the local level, and this "wins them territory in the hearts of people," he added.
Afghan society is much more bottom to top than the way it is currently being engaged with by the international forces and moves to stamp out corruption at local levels are positive.
In the long term, the country's economic development is vital, and China is taking a lead with its investment in copper mine at Aynak, said Langton.
"I expect we will emerge with a clear agenda for the next five years, for more trained army and police, with an adequate number toward institutionalization, better economic effort in Afghanistan, a broader regional understanding, and most important of all, a plan for reconciliation and reintegration," President Karzai told the BBC just before the conference.
In the same BBC interview, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown outlined some of his expectations of the conference.
"I want a decision that in 2010 they'll rise to 200,000 including the police, in 2011 to 300,000, so that the Afghans can gradually take more control of the security of their own country, policing and armed forces, security services, building up local government, civilian control."
On the timescale, Brown said: "Our plan is actually to start reducing the number of troops as we can get the Afghans to take security control of their own provinces, so you will see in 2010 and 2011 some of the provinces become security controlled by the Afghans."
"Afghans have suffered for far too long from a culture of impunity and the lack of rule of law. If we are to achieve a stable and secure Afghanistan these ills must be remedied, starting with improving the electoral process ahead of this year's parliamentary elections," UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon said at the conference.
The conference was co-hosted by Brown, Karzai and Ban, and co-chaired by British Foreign Secretary David Miliband, his outgoing Afghan counterpart Rangin Spanta, and UN Special Representative to Afghanistan Kai Eide.
Miliband outlined the broad political goal of the conference. "The politics is every bit as important as the military in this conflict, because success will not be measured by the number of insurgents killed or captured, but by the number of Afghans living peacefully within the constitution."
He said the conference aims to make progress in three key areas in Afghanistan -- security, governance and development, and regional relations.
Brown echoed his foreign secretary's expectations, saying the conference's aim was to "match military and political strategies in a coordinated way".
Miliband told the House of Commons last week that a conference goal was to focus on how the international forces can help mentor, partner and develop the Afghan National Security Forces.
"ISAF has already trained and equipped 96,000 members of the Afghan National Army (ANA) and the Afghan National Police (ANP) are also now about 90,000 strong. The current target for the end of this year is 134,000 ANA and 109,000 ANP and we will do everything we can to ensure that those targets are met and ideally exceeded," he said.
Foreign ministers from International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) partners including U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Afghanistan's immediate neighbors and key regional players and representatives from the United Nations, the EU, NATO and other international organizations attended the meeting.
NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen said before the conference that he expected it to mainly focus on two issues -- transferring security to Afghanistan and providing civilian assistance.
In the run-up to the conference NATO appointed the British ambassador in Kabul as the new NATO senior civilian representative for Afghanistan.
Mark Sedwill, who has been ambassador for about a year, said big challenges included strengthening the organization and coordination of civilian assistance to Afghanistan while NATO needed to reinforce integration of military efforts and with civilian reconstruction.
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