US slashes aid to Afghanistan over political impasse

DOHA/KABUL－US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on Monday announced a $1 billion cut in US aid to Afghanistan after he failed to convince Afghan President Ashraf Ghani and his political foe Abdullah Abdullah to end a feud that has jeopardized a US-led peace effort.

The United States is also prepared to cut 2021 assistance by the same amount and is conducting "a review of all of our programs and projects to identify additional reductions, and reconsider our pledges to future donor conferences for Afghanistan", Pompeo said in a statement.

The US top diplomat's statement came as he flew home from a fruitless daylong effort in Kabul to end competing claims to the presidency by Ghani and Abdullah and win their agreement to form "an inclusive government".

The harshly worded announcement at the end of the mission he undertook despite the spreading coronavirus pandemic underscored how badly stalled the effort to end Washington's longest war and decades of strife in Afghanistan has become.

The US "deeply regrets" that Ghani and Abdullah were "unable to agree on an inclusive government", Pompeo said.

"We are today announcing a responsible adjustment to our spending in Afghanistan and immediately reducing assistance by $1 billion this year. We are prepared to reduce by another $1 billion in 2021," he said. "We will also initiate a review of all of our programs and projects to identify additional reductions."

On his way back to Washington, Pompeo landed at a military base in Qatar for a 75-minute meeting with Taliban officials, including their top negotiator, Mullah Baradar Akhund.

Speaking to reporters after departing Qatar, Pompeo declined to detail how the $1 billion in aid cuts would be apportioned or whether he set a deadline for Ghani and Abdullah, who had served as the country's chief executive, to settle their dispute.

But he indicated that the aid cut could be canceled if they came to an agreement. "We are hopeful, frankly, that they will get their act together and we won't have to do it. But we're prepared to do that."

Troop withdrawal

In the meantime, he said, Washington would continue backing Afghan security forces while continuing a phased "conditions-based" troop withdrawal as specified in a deal signed with the Taliban in Doha, Qatar, on Feb 29.

He said that despite ongoing fighting, the Taliban largely have fulfilled a commitment to reduce violence and were working to form a team for intra-Afghan peace talks.

Pompeo's mission came nearly a month after his last visit to Doha for the signing of the Feb 29 deal with the Taliban. Ghani's government was not a party to the agreement.

The agreement was to have been followed by the opening by March 10 of negotiations on a political settlement to decades of strife between the insurgents and a delegation of Afghans that would include government officials.

But the process stalled over a Taliban demand for the release by Kabul of 5,000 prisoners and the feud between Ghani and Abdullah, both of whom claimed the presidency following a disputed September election marred by allegations of fraud.

Agencies Via Xinhua