Afghanistan ‘will require funding until 2025’

AFGHANISTAN will need financial and military support for many years after a 2014 deadline for foreign combat troops to return home.

The country may not be able to balance its budget until the middle of the next decade, Britain’s ambassador William Patey said.

Speaking 10 years after the start of the US military campaign, he said he was confident the Afghan army was already stronger than the Taliban, but it would need long-term help with training and funds.

British and other forces should provide that, because if the Taliban returned to power by force, it risked the country becoming a safe haven for al-Qaida again, he added.

“It’s important to get across that Afghanistan is not being abandoned in 2014. The nature of our engagement is changing,” Patey said.

President Hamid Karzai and his Western backers agreed troops would leave by the end of 2014, prompting fears among some Afghans that their security forces would be unable to stop the country slipping into civil war.

But Patey said that while foreign soldiers would no longer go out to fight, Afghan forces would get funds and support.

Afghanistan will likely need long-term financial help, he warned, although Karzai’s government hopes development of untapped mineral resources will make it financially independent within years, not decades. “I think it’s going to take at the earliest 2025 before Afghanistan might be able to balance its budget,” Patey said.

Supporting Afghanistan’s army was critical to preventing attacks on Britain like those that killed 52 people in London in 2005, because if the Taliban fought their way back to power, they could provide a haven for al-Qaida again, Patey added.

“It’s still about national security, we’re here in order to ensure that Afghanistan once again does not return to a state where it can be used to threaten our security.”