On Sunday, American and Afghan officials, including U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan Ryan C. Crocker and Afghan national security advisor Rangin Spanta, announced their endorsement of a “strategic partnership agreement” that will lay out the expectations of US involvement and commitment in Afghanistan after 2014, when both countries hope that all security duties will be transferred to Afghani forces. The proposed agreement, which was a work in progress for nearly a year and a half, has been finalized just in time to be signed by Afghan President Hamid Karzai and United States President Barack Obama at the NATO summit on Afghanistan in May.
The written agreement is an effort on the part of the United States to quell fears that a complete withdrawal of U.S. troops and support in Afghanistan could have the same effects in 2012 as it did after America withdrew from the country after the Soviet war in 1979. Though a majority of Afghan citizens are in favor of continued support, many, including President Karzai are worried that the document does little to actually promise financial and physical support and have called for concrete dollar amounts and pledges of security forces to the region to be included.
Currently, the agreement suggests that the United States will continue to support development in Afghanistan economically, but does not specify projects or programs that will be funded by the country, nor does it detail the physical presence of United States security forces in the area. The effort is unfortunately more “symbolic than substantive,” as the New York Times notes, because the United States cannot pledge specific a specific amount of aid to Afghanistan at this time.
While this agreement may seem like a giant step towards an independent Afghanistan, it is clear that the separation of powers in the United States, particularly the gaps between foreign policy making between ambassadors and the executive branches of other countries and Congress, which is in charge of allocating funds for proposed programs, may hinder the implementation of the agreement. This distance between the creators of the agreement and those able to fund it, combined with a citizenry that worries more about domestic issues than providing foreign aid, could make actual action difficult to accomplish. While the two ambassadors may have created goals for progress in Afghanistan, it will be up to Congress to provide the financial support to create any real change in the country.
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