Donors 'to pledge $16 bn for Afghanistan'

[FarCenter]

Source: Google - AFP

TOKYO — Donors at a major development conference for Afghanistan will pledge total aid of more than $16 billion for four years to 2015, Japanese Foreign Minister Koichiro Gemba said Saturday.

Japan, which will co-chair the one-day conference on Sunday with Afghanistan, will provide up to $3 billion for the five years to 2016, in addition to $1 billion for the war-torn nation's neighbouring states, he said.

The total pledge of more than $16 billion will include part of the aid to be declared by Japan, he said.

...

After more than 30 years of war, the Afghan economy is weak and the country cannot survive without foreign aid. According to the World Bank, spending on defence and development by donors accounted for more than 95 percent of GDP in 2010-11.

Read more: http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5jZlXzy1JxqOkzwYUMC30UBwPL09Q?docId=CNG.94f3b9267f7fdd1fb024c4fb38c618c8.341

[msongs]

1. let the bush family subsidize the effort, it is all their fault nt

[gtar100]

2. Because the billions we spend through the military there doesn't do shit for the country.

What are we there for now anyway. It's just a money pit for taxpayer dollars. It's lost its meaning of "freedom" and "helping the people" a long time ago (if there was any sincerity to those words in the first place).

[Uncle Joe]

3. Good, I hope they use it wisely.

Thanks for the thread, FarCenter.

[xtraxritical]

4. These pledges will be long forgotten before they are ever make good.

[magic59]

5. Afghanistan

the gift that keeps on taking, thanks to bush and his war profiteering buddies.

[Brigid]

6. It's just money down the drain.

Afghanistan is a hopeless case.

[entanglement]

7. "Aid" is a meaningless word. Loans with usurious rates and onerous "conditions" are considered aid.

"Conditions" are typically the enforced sale of an impoverished nation's resources to global corporates. In return, local crooks receive a cut or siphon off the "aid" money to private bank accounts in Switzerland or similar havens for looted money.

The already impoverished people of Afghanistan and their children will be paying off this "aid" while western financiers, Karzai and the drug lords make merry.