PARIS — Donors ranging from the U.S. to the World Bank pledged more than $21 billion for Afghanistan on Thursday — and this time they want their money spent better in a desperately poor country where the president is barely in charge.
Benefactors that have already poured billions into Afghanistan since the ouster of the Taliban nearly seven years ago said they want greater coordination of the handouts and larger involvement by President Hamid Karzai’s administration.
In opening their pockets yet again, many donors complained about endemic corruption that has bled past donations in a nation where illegal drugs are the mainstay of a broken economy.
“Corruption threatens to ruin everything so many have worked so hard to build,” Danish Foreign Minister Per Stig Moeller told delegates from about 80 nations and international organizations.
Afghan officials detailed a five-year plan that envisions a national government better able to manage its affairs and be accountable for the result, but Afghanistan and its many patrons all recognize it is a long way from true financial or security independence.
The Afghan government envisions peace by 2020.
Afghanistan’s strategic place at the crossroads of the fight against global terrorism is a large reason that the world is willing to donate heavily, but even a $10.2 billion pledge from the United States is not enough to make much of a dent in Afghanistan’s many problems.
The U.S. gift over two years was the single largest pledge Thursday. The United States also has the overwhelmingly largest number of foreign troops in Afghanistan, many of them battling persistent Taliban fighters who retreated but never went away.
The pledged money is a mix of what Congress already has approved for this year and next, and about $7 billion more sought by the Bush administration before it leaves office but which Congress has not approved.
Other major donors included Britain, $1.2 billion; the Asian Development Bank, $1.3 billion; and the World Bank, $1.1 billion.
Despite the demands for better spending of aid money, there is no easy way to make sure the funds don’t slip away.
Security questions loom over every Afghan aid project, since Karzai’s Western-backed administration has only a shaky grip on much of the country. The heroin trade is a key part of the economy — as is corruption.
