President Ashraf Ghani initiated a process within the Government of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan over the past couple of months. The Compact is an Afghan-led initiative to demonstrate the government’s commitment to creating a peaceful, stable, and prosperous society and is an important factor upon which the United States relied when developing key components of the U.S. South Asia Policy, launched by President Trump on August 21. Today, President Ghani convened the U.S.-Afghanistan Bilateral Compact Executive Committee to receive updates from the Compact’s four working groups.
The Executive Committee was chaired by President Ghani in which Chief Executive Abdullah and relevant Ministers participated. The U.S. side was led by Special Chargé d’Affaires Ambassador Hugo Llorens, and Resolute Support and U.S. Forces Afghanistan Commander General Nicholson. In the session, Afghan and U.S. working group leads highlighted the completion of the Compact’s four matrices focusing on Governance, Economics, Peace and Reconciliation, and Security, noting that a total of more than 200 benchmarks have been established by the Government of Afghanistan, building on Afghanistan’s obligations under the 2012 U.S.-Afghanistan Strategic Partnership Agreement.
Under the Compact, Afghanistan has adopted benchmarks tied to global standards promulgated by the World Bank and other leading governance institutions. The working groups also outlined plans to monitor Afghanistan’s progress on the Compact’s benchmarks, including the timeframe for each working group’s next meeting.
