Brussels, july 29: The US special envoy to Afghanistan and Pakistan says Taliban militants are receiving more funding from sympathizers abroad than from Afghanistan’s illegal drug trade.
Richard Holbrooke says the United States is setting up an interdepartmental task force to deal with the problem.
He says most of the money is coming from countries in the oil-rich Persian Gulf. But money for Taliban operations is pouring in from other parts of the world including Western Europe.
Holbrooke briefed EU officials in Brussels on Tuesday on the progress of the anti-Taliban campaigns in both Pakistan and Afghanistan.
He also urged the international community to help Pakistan deal with refugees uprooted by the fighting in the Swat Valley because the region is a vital staging area for militant operations in neighboring Afghanistan.
‘US not to abandon Afghanistan’
The US envoy for Pakistan and Afghanistan, Richard Holbrooke, today said the United States would not “abandon” Afghanistan, as it did in the past, but would gradually shift its role from “combat operations” to help rebuild the country.
“We are not going to abandon the country as happened in 1989 and 2004,” Holbrooke told CNN in an interview from Brussels.
At the same time, he said, the United States would change its role in Afghanistan.
“We do have to transition over time from a combat-driven operational effort to a situation which the Afghan security forces can take care of their own security while we continue to help them rebuild their country, which has been torn apart by 30 years of war since the Soviet invasion in 1978,” the US envoy said.
Emphasising on strengthening the Afghan security forces, Holbrooke, who finished his week-long trip to Afghanistan and Pakistan and is now visiting the NATO headquarters in Brussels, said, “We have to build the Afghan security forces so that they can over time replace the US and other NATO allied forces.”
Informing that he discussed the issue with General McChrystal and General Formica, the man in charge of that effort on this project, Holbrooke said, “We are going to revamp police training, which has been a mess. And we’re going to do a lot of other things to focus on that point”.
Holbrooke, who met four of the 41 presidential candidates including President Hamid Karzai, who is seeking re-election, during his visit to the war-torn nation, reiterated that the Obama administration neither supports nor opposes any presidential candidates.
“We are really truly neutral,” he emphasised.
“The election is going to be an extraordinary event, the first contested election in Afghanistan history,” he said.
“It’s democracy in action in wartime situations. It’s going to be an extraordinary event to watch, and I will go back out there at the President’s and Hillary Clinton’s instructions to do — to help with the observing of it,” he added.
–Agencies