Rebuilding Afghanistan

Abstract

Following the September 11 terrorist attacks the United States has revamped many of its foreign aid programs. Prior to that date the administration's top foreign aid initiatives for the 2002 fiscal year had been combating the spread of HIV/AIDS and other infectious diseases, fighting poverty, broadening the public/private partnership in aid programming, and expanding the counter-narcotics campaign in the Andean region. These issues, while still a concern, have taken a back seat to the war on terrorism. Attention is now focused on devoting resources--humanitarian, developmental and strategic--to support for the campaign against terrorism. The United States has announced over one billion dollars in new aid to Pakistan and to assist refugees in Afghanistan and that country's neighbors. More aid is flowing to a broader set of nations backing the U.S. anti-terrorism campaign, especially the countries of Central Asia. While Pakistan and the Central Asian Republics are to be major new recipients of aid, Afghanistan will be by far the largest beneficiary of terrorism related assistance. Specifically, the United States and other Western nations have promised to essentially underwrite Afghanistan's recovery from two decades of drought, war and dislocation. For its part the United States has vowed to lead an international effort to rebuild Afghanistan on the model of the Marshall Plan for Europe after World War II. In addition U.S. foreign assistance is being utilized as a highly visible tool in the early days of the anti-terrorism campaign. The price will not be cheap. Initial studies suggested that the "going rate" for comparable nation-building exercises is about one billion dollars for every one million people. Including the four million Afghans living outside its borders, Afghanistan has a population of about 25 million.

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Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
Jun 01, 2002
Accession Number
ADA527153

Entities

People

  • Robert E. Looney

Organizations

  • Naval Postgraduate School

Tags

Communities of Interest

  • Biomedical

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Afghanistan
  • Asia
  • Central Asia
  • Europe
  • European Union
  • Foreign Aid
  • Governments
  • Health
  • Money
  • National Security
  • Natural Resources
  • Public Health
  • Resource Management
  • Second World War
  • Terrorism
  • Terrorists
  • United States

Fields of Study

  • Political science

Readers

  • Government and Public Administration Law.
  • Military and Counterinsurgency Studies.
  • Political Violence and Terrorism Studies.