Kabul meeting to lay ground for 2014 transition

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, left, meets with Afghan President Hamid Karzai on July 19 at the presidential palace in Kabul, Afghanistan.


Kabul meeting to lay ground for 2014 transition
By Robert H. Reid - The Associated Press
Posted : Monday Jul 19, 2010 18:46:06 EDT

KABUL, Afghanistan — The strategy sits for now on a table in a locked-down Afghan capital: Hand over security in all 34 provinces to the government by the end of 2014 — more than three years after President Obama’s date for the start of an American troop drawdown.

By Tuesday, it will be adopted at a one-day international conference, giving war-weary Americans and Europeans a date for when their involvement in Afghanistan may begin to come to an end. It will also give President Hamid Karzai a chance to show whether his struggling government is making progress toward running the country.

The conference comes at a time of growing anxiety in the U.S. and Europe about the course of the war — concerns underscored by Taliban attacks on Monday that killed six Afghan police officers and two American soldiers. A major security operation virtually shut down Kabul for the conference in which some 60 nations will focus on the postwar transition.

Afghan officials want the U.S. and other international donors to give them a greater say in spending the billions of dollars in aid and reconstruction funds that have flowed into the country since the war began in 2001 — often with only limited results, and amid allegations of corruption and mismanagement that have bolstered the Taliban in the eyes of many ordinary Afghans.

Talk of lofty development goals will take place against the backdrop of rising casualties, especially in the Taliban strongholds of the south and east.

leave?

I think having the troops pack their stuff and leave would be ideal.