NATO Plan promotes Afghan manufacturing industry

11 Jun '10

4 min read

Paper is another burgeoning industry, Ferrari said. Because of the near-constant state of turmoil in Afghanistan for the past 30 years, there are virtually no areas where trees can be harvested to make paper. Though paper still is imported, both civilian and government printing companies have popped up in recent years, he said.

“The ministry of defense has its own print plant, and we have a contract with local Afghan companies to do our marketing or our recruiting and retention,” the colonel said. “There's a vibrant local industry and a state-owned industry that the MOD owns. But, I think it will be years before they're actually making their own paper here in Afghanistan.”

For now, he said, there won't be any drop in demand. The U.S. government spent $20 billion from 2003 to 2009 building the 200,000-man strong Afghan security forces, and plans to spend the same amount in 2010 and 2011 to recruit, train, and retain another 100,000 troops.

“In addition to generating and sustaining the security forces, we spend a lot of effort to make sure that what we're doing here is sustainable in the long term and that the Afghan people feel that they have an impact on their security forces,” Ferrari said. “And so we want to make sure that we develop manufacturing capabilities, jobs and literacy training.”

Ferrari said he hears a lot of questions regarding NATO's economic plans for post-war Afghanistan, and he compares its mission to the post-World War II Marshall Plan to rebuild Europe.

“We're investing hundreds of millions and billions of dollars into the local economy to jump-start manufacturing,” he said of the training command. “We're taking hundreds of thousands of Afghans who had no formal education, who are not literate; we're bringing them into the security forces.”

United States Department of Defense

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