Bush to request $10.6 billion for Afghanistan

"President Bush plans to ask Congress for $10.6 billion in aid for Afghanistan, primarily to beef up the country’s security forces, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said Thursday.
The aid request would come before what is expected to be another spring offensive by resurgent forces linked to the Taliban, the former rulers of Afghanistan. In Washington, the Pentagon announced Thursday that it was delaying the departure of a 3,200-soldier combat brigade from Afghanistan for as long as three months, increasing the American force level there to around 24,000. An additional 20,000 soldiers from other NATO countries are also deployed there.
The aid request would include $8.6 billion for training and equipping Afghan security forces and would go toward increasing the size of Afghanistan’s national army by 70,000 and its local police forces by 82,000, said a senior American official familiar with the issue.
An additional $2 billion would go to reconstruction projects like building roads, laying down electric power lines, development in rural areas, and counternarcotics efforts, administration officials said. The officials said that they planned to use some of the money to help Afghanistan and Pakistan battle the Taliban and other insurgents along the Afghan-Pakistan border."

source
The New York Times. Bush to Seek More Aid for Afghanistan as Taliban Regroups. January 26, 2007.

posted: sunday, january 28, 2007, 7:12 PM ET

tags: afghanistan bush