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Afghanistan Seeks New Security Guarantors as US Scales Back Its Support: Researcher

© RIA Novosti . Andrey GreshnovAs the US aid to Afghanistan is scaled back, the country is looking for other supporters and sources of funding, leading researcher at the Russian Institute of Strategic Studies Azhdar Kurtov said at a press conference on Afghanistan
As the US aid to Afghanistan is scaled back, the country is looking for other supporters and sources of funding, leading researcher at the Russian Institute of Strategic Studies Azhdar Kurtov said at a press conference on Afghanistan - Sputnik International
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As the US aid to Afghanistan is scaled back, the country is looking for other supporters and sources of funding, leading researcher at the Russian Institute of Strategic Studies Azhdar Kurtov said at a press conference on Afghanistan, held at the press center of Rossiya Segodnya International Information Agency.

MOSCOW, October 8 (RIA Novosti), Daria Chernyshova - As the US aid to Afghanistan is scaled back, the country is looking for other supporters and sources of funding, leading researcher at the Russian Institute of Strategic Studies Azhdar Kurtov said at a press conference on Afghanistan, held at the press center of Rossiya Segodnya International Information Agency.

“It is an eastern game. The United States is not concealing that it will be no longer provide Afghanistan with the level of aid that it has been allocating since 2001. So they [Afghanistan] need to look for other sources, because Afghanistan is not able to stand on its own ‘economic legs,’” Kurtov said.

China borders Afghanistan,” he stressed. “For any state the priority is not only relations with the superpowers, but with their neighbors.”

Kurtov added that the expenditures of Kabul’s budget would only increase as once the US and allied combat troops withdraw by December 31, 2014, Afghanistan’s security expenses will grow.

“So when an overseas security sponsor decreases security guarantees in a country, the options of looking for security guarantees from neighbors increase inevitably,” Azhdar Kurtov pointed out.

Afghanistan’s new president Ashraf Ghani is expected to pay his first official visit as president to China at the end of the month – a move widely seen as a sign of new allegiances.

“The Chinese are interested in getting to uncultivated parts of Afghanistan, so that their can companies work there. Their economic and political interests intertwine here,” Krutov said. “The Americans are trying to pull the plug on China wherever they can, so far on the sea routes,” he noted adding that China is developing ground routes.

At the same time, Beijing’s interests in the region are also quite obvious.

“The Chinese interests are obvious. It will penetrate Central Asia, it will penetrate Afghanistan, because this solves the vital interests of the Celestial Empire. China is not going to copy the US experience, nor will it take the role of Afghanistan security sponsor,” Azhdar Kurtov stressed.

About 41,000 NATO troops remain in Afghanistan to fight the Taliban insurgency alongside Afghan soldiers and police. NATO’s combat mission will end in December. On September 30, the United States, NATO and Afghanistan signed a deal to formally justify the presence of a limited military contingent in the Central Asian state after the formal withdrawal of international forces. A follow-on force of about 12,000 troops is likely to stay into 2015 on training and support duties.

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