No Aid, No Growth In Afghanistan?

Support is expected to shrink once all the troops have withdrawn. "We have heard unofficially, but very clearly from many European and other Western governments that when the soldiers go, the money will go with them. I am afraid that after 2014, Afghanistan will be treated just as any other developing country," Thomas Ruttig, a researcher with the Kabul-based Afghan Analysts Network told Deutsche Welle.

In June, a US congressional study warned that Afghanistan could be left in the midst of a "severe economic depression" after the 2014 pullout.

The same study found that roughly 80 percent of the US Agency for International Development's (USAID) funds are spent in troubled Southern and Eastern Afghanistan, but that most of those funds have been poorly spent on short-term stabilization projects instead of longer term development initiatives designed to promote growth.

"The economic sectors linked to the international military presence will clearly lose their importance once the troops have gone. The bigger problem is that the jobs and projects that have been financed by development aid are not enough to promote economic development," Sayfuddin Sayhoon, an economist at the University of Kabul, told Deutsche Welle. He said that the government does not have a clear economic strategy, but relies heavily on foreign aid. Read More.