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| Afghanistan | |||
| Foggy Bottom not pessimistic about Afghanistan's future after U.S. forces withdrawal | |||
| 2013-01-20 | |||
"No, we don't share that view," Blake said. "As you know, Afghan President Karzai just paid a very important visit to Washington last week. And, in his press conference with President Karzai, President Obama made several important points."
"At the same time, the Afghan National Security Forces continue to grow stronger and now lead 80 percent of the security operations that are being conducted in Afghanistan," he said. "And, by February, they'll be in control of security in areas where 90 percent of the population lives." "And I think importantly for Central Asians, the President announced that we will be announcing a responsible drawdown of our forces from Afghanistan that protects the gains that we and Afghanistan have made over the last several years," he said. "After 2014, U.S. security forces will be focused on continuing to train and assist Afghan forces, but also continuing the very important counterterrorism mission. The exact number of U.S. troops is the subject of negotiations that are now going on between the United States and Afghanistan." "But a very important part of helping Afghanistan to ensure its own future will be to help ensure a proper economic transition, and again I want to thank Turkmenistan for the important role that it is playing to support regional integration efforts, and also to provide electricity to our friends in Afghanistan," he said. "As I said earlier, the TAPI project is one of the most important regional integration projects, because it will provide Turkmen gas for the growing Indian market, but it will also provide very substantial transit revenues for Afghanistan and Pakistan." "Important progress has been made on the TAPI pipeline already by virtue of the gas sales purchase agreements and the road show that took place last September," he said. "The next step will be for a consortium to be formed and the details of that, of course, are still being worked out. I leave it to the government of Turkmenistan to provide any updates on that, because this will be their decision about who should form such a consortium and who should lead it. But this was an active topic of conversation today." | |||
| Posted by:Steve White |
| #3 You mean the complete dissolvance of any official government and the potential civilian non-believer slaughter, with the eventual attempts on Karzai's life is optomistic? Love that last line. The gas pipeline is very important for the economic health of all nations involved. Unless it is USA and Canada. |
| Posted by: swksvolFF 2013-01-20 12:22 |
| #2 State can afford to be optimistic; aside from the career-enhancing moves of sucking up to former Soviet republics, they have had no 'skin in the game' in Afghanistan*. * just as in Iraq. |
| Posted by: Pappy 2013-01-20 12:04 |
| #1 Next to last para is the give-away. The poor bastid is stuck on "nation building". Those people have been getting by long, long before the first white man set foot on this shore. For foks sake leave them along and let them continue. |
| Posted by: Besoeker 2013-01-20 04:32 |