Afghanistan Economic Development
President Bush says the U.S. and NATO are working with the Afghan government to help develop Afghanistan’s economy.
President George W. Bush says Afghanistan has made “remarkable progress” since the overthrow of the Taleban regime in 2001: “Under the Taleban, women were barred from public office. Today, Afghanistan’s parliament includes ninety-one women – and President [Hamid] Karzai has appointed the first woman to serve as a provincial governor. Under the Taleban, free enterprise was stifled. Today, the Afghan economy has doubled in size since liberation. Afghanistan has attracted eight-hundred million dollars in foreign investment during that time. Under the Taleban, there were about nine-hundred-thousand children in school. Today, more than five million children are in school – about one-point-eight-million of them are girls.” Habiba Sarabi, the first woman governor of Bamyan province, says women are playing a part in the Afghan economy. “In our province," she says, "women have small income-generating activities and they run shops in public markets together with men." As women we are changing traditions and breaking old taboos,” says Shukria Barakzai, a member of Afghanistan’s parliament. She says economic development is a major challenge for Afghanistan, “where sixty percent of the population lives below the poverty threshold, [and] work is lacking and underpaid.” President Bush says the United States and its NATO allies are working with the Afghan government to help develop Afghanistan’s economy: “NATO is operating twenty-five provincial reconstruction teams across the country. . . .These teams will help build irrigation systems, improve power production, provide access to micro-credit. The idea is to encourage entrepreneurship, job formation, enterprise.” The U.S. and other nations have built more than six-thousand-four-hundred-thirty-seven kilometers of roads in Afghanistan since 2001. “And we’re going to build another [one-thousand-six-hundred-nine kilometers} of roads in 2007,” says Mr. Bush. The U.S. commitment there, he says, is serious: “I’m asking Congress for eleven-point-eight billion dollars over the next two years to help this young democracy survive. I’ve ordered an increase in U.S. forces in Afghanistan. We’ve extended the stay of three-thousand-two-hundred troops now in the country, for four months, and we’ll deploy a replacement force that will sustain this increase for the foreseeable future.” “Success in Afghanistan,” says President Bush, “is important for our security.”