The cheque’s in the post

So Claire Short is staying on to help ease the post-war suffering in Iraq — presumably in the same way Britain and the USA helped Afghanistan:

As the United States prepares to spend some $12 billion a month on bombing the Iraqis, it has so far offered only $65 million to provide them with food, water, sanitation, shelter and treatment for the injuries they are likely to receive.

…

“To the Afghan people we make this commitment,” Blair pledged during the same speech in October 2001. “The conflict will not be the end. We will not walk away, as the outside world has done so many times before.” Three months later, the UN estimated that Afghanistan would need at least $10bn for reconstruction over the following five years. The US, which had just spent $4.5bn on bombing the country, offered $300m for the first year and refused to make any commitment for subsequent years. This year, George Bush “forgot” to produce an aid budget for Afghanistan, until he was forced to provide another $300m by Congress.

The government, which has an annual budget of just $460 million - or around half of what the US still spends every month on chasing the remnants of Al Qaeda through the mountains - is effectively bankrupt. At the beginning of this month the Afghan president, Hamid Karzai, flew to Washington to beg George Bush for more money. He was given $50m, $35m of which the US insists is spent on the construction of a five-star hotel in Kabul. Karzai, in other words, has discovered what the people of Iraq will soon find out: generosity dries up when you are yesterday’s news.

I wonder if Ms Short will be thinking about the Iraqi civillians that are going to die over the next decade thanks to the depleted uranium that will be used in the attack she’s about to vote for…

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