The projected image was of international statesmen gathering in solidarity with an Afghanistan
marching forward. But the alacrity with which they headed for their planes after spending the briefest of times in Kabul seemed to mirror the West’s haste to get on the exit route from this costly war.
There had, in the many previous conferences on Afghanistan’s future, been an air of expectation and even optimism. But the gathering for the “Kabul process” was permeated with an undercurrent of past disappointments and trepidation for the future.
The pledges made, already well-trailed, were trotted out without much conviction, the declaration of support for Hamid Karzai who had been accused by some of his Western backers of stealing last year’s election, delivered with little enthusiasm. Nine years after the fall of the Taliban, Hillary Clinton, the US Secretary of State, talked of the road ahead “being full of challenges” and “questions by many on whether success was even possible”.
Read it all.
Kim Sengupta: Throwing cash at a corrupt government shows how the West is desperate for an exit
The projected image was of international statesmen gathering in solidarity with an Afghanistan
marching forward. But the alacrity with which they headed for their planes after spending the briefest of times in Kabul seemed to mirror the West’s haste to get on the exit route from this costly war.
There had, in the many previous conferences on Afghanistan’s future, been an air of expectation and even optimism. But the gathering for the “Kabul process” was permeated with an undercurrent of past disappointments and trepidation for the future.
The pledges made, already well-trailed, were trotted out without much conviction, the declaration of support for Hamid Karzai who had been accused by some of his Western backers of stealing last year’s election, delivered with little enthusiasm. Nine years after the fall of the Taliban, Hillary Clinton, the US Secretary of State, talked of the road ahead “being full of challenges” and “questions by many on whether success was even possible”.
Read it all.