KABUL (TCA) — A donors conference on Afghanistan held in Brussels on October 4 and 5 brought pledges of €13.6 billion for the next four years and long-term political support from the international community, including €5 billion from the European Union and its member states, the European Union External Action Service reported.
Speaking after the conference at a joint press briefing with the Afghan President, High Representative of the European Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy/Vice-President of the European Commission, Federica Mogherini said: “It has been an extremely successful financial support exercise, an extremely successful pledging conference, but it has also been a very successful political conference.”
The conference, co-hosted by the European Union and the Government of Afghanistan, brought together 75 countries and 26 international organizations and agencies.
Participants endorsed the ambitious reform agenda presented by the Afghan government. They undertook to ensure continued international political and financial support for Afghanistan over the next four years.
“The international community sees no alternatives to a strong, united, determined, cohesive and inclusive National Unity Government that manages to bring forward the reforms that it has envisaged for the country and that with this international support it can really realise,” Mogherini said.
“I have seen clearly that there is space for a common basis for regional political support to the political peace and reconciliation process in Afghanistan. Regional support for Afghan-led and Afghan-own peace process that will be inclusive based on democracy and in respect of Afghanistan’s constitution, as well as a common understanding that negotiations with the Taliban will be needed on the basis of these principals. The European Union together with our Afghan friends will build on this new window of hope,” Mogherini added.
But Afghanistan is required to agree to a series of political, economic, and social reforms in return for the funds, RFE/RL reported.
Afghan President Ashraf Ghani told the conference that his government already is making progress on reforms to improve human rights and rein in corruption.
The EU also wants Kabul to take back Afghan migrants whose asylum applications in the EU have been rejected — although EU donor money is not linked to the demand.
On the sidelines of the conference, EU diplomats focused on trying to get peace negotiations back on course by bringing together four key international players in the peace process – the United States, China, India, and Pakistan.
Mogherini said after those talks that there was an understanding “to work on a common basis for regional political support for the peace and reconciliation process in Afghanistan.”
Speaking at the Brussels conference on October 5, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry called on Afghanistan’s regional neighbors to do more to help it make peace with the Taliban and build on its economic progress.
He said Russia, China, Pakistan, India, and Iran should “think about the special role that they could play in this region in order to help make a major difference not only in the long-term economy and future social structure of Afghanistan but in reaching peace with the Taliban.”
Kerry also urged the Taliban to follow the recent example of an Afghan warlord and strike its own peace deal with the government in Kabul.
Kerry said that the peace deal signed last week by Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, who heads the Hezb-e Islami group and was a key figure in Afghanistan’s civil war in the 1990s, was a “model for what might be possible.”
As Kerry was speaking, fresh fighting raged for a third consecutive day between Taliban and Afghan security forces in the northern city of Kunduz. Taliban fighters penetrated the center of Kunduz on October 3 and were testing the defenses of two other provincial capitals in the south of the country.
