Afghanistan Strategy Questioned in Ryan Crocker Hearing, Report Warns of Long-Term Economic Crisis
Corruption and poor governance remain key challenges in Afghanistan, career diplomat Ryan Crocker testified at his nomination hearing for U.S. Ambassador to Afghanistan, the day Senate Democrats reported that the war-torn nation risks falling into a crisis when U.S. troops hand over power in 2014.
“I’m under no illusions of the difficulty of the challenge,” the former ambassador to Iraq and Pakistan testified today before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. “If Iraq was hard, and it was hard, Afghanistan in many respects is harder.”
The United States has provided about $18.8 billion in foreign aid to Afghanistan in the past decade, more than any other country, including Iraq, according to a report compiled by Senate Democrats for the Foreign Relations Committee