Britain is to cut aid worth hundreds of millions of pounds to countries around the world to help pay for projects aimed at speeding the withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan, the Observer can reveal.
Detailed plans to boost aid funding to Afghanistan by 40% as part of a re-ordering of global priorities will be outlined tomorrow by the international development secretary, Andrew Mitchell.
The news emerged on another bloody day of conflict as four British servicemen were killed in separate incidents in Afghanistan in 24 hours, bringing the military death toll in the country to 322 since 2001.
Mitchell will cite Afghanistan as the main beneficiary of a review of aid to around 90 countries that benefit from the Department for International Development's £2.9bn aid budget.
Countries already expected to experience cuts in UK aid include long-term beneficiaries turned economic powerhouses such as Russia and China. It is understood that the review will also look at cutting or ending aid to a number of countries in South America and eastern Europe. Sources said money would continue to be channelled as a matter of priority to the poorest countries, many in Africa.
But the search for other cuts will range far more widely. Overall, the number of countries receiving UK bilateral aid is likely to be more than halved to well under 50.
Mitchell, whose DfID budget has been "ringfenced" from the government's austerity drive, is under intense pressure from sections of his own party to justify its special status while other departments, including the Home Office and Department for Work and Pensions, face cuts of 25% to 40%.
The coalition government has also promised to meet the legally binding target, set by Labour, of providing an aid budget of 0.7% of national output, which will mean real-terms increases. This has placed DfID under an even greater obligation to deliver value.
Mitchell will stress that an aid expansion to Afghanistan from £500m to £700m over the next four years will help the country stand on its own feet – improving stability, the economy and government, and allowing UK troops to come home within David Cameron's target of five years.
That target appeared a long way off yesterday when an airman for the RAF Regiment died in a road accident near Camp Bastion in Helmand, a marine from 40 Commando Royal Marines died in an explosion in Sangin, and a member of the Royal Dragoon Guards died in a blast in the Nahr-e Saraj district of Helmand. A soldier from the Royal Logistics Corps was last night also killed in another blast in Nahr-e Saraj. Next of kin have been informed.
The Royal Logistics Corps soldier was part of a bomb disposal team clearing a route in southern Nahr-e Saraj so that local people could move more freely, according to a spokesman for the Army's Task Force Helmand, Lieutenant Colonel James Carr-Smith. "He was a very brave and courageous man and he will be missed by us all," he added.
The soldier from the Royal Dragoons, whose death was announced earlier in the day, was part of a patrol providing security to enable new roads and security bases to be constructed north-east of Gereshk.
The two other deaths – of the marine killed in an explosion while on patrol with US marines, supported by the Afghan army, in Sangin, and the airman who died in a road accident north of Camp Bastion, the main British military base – occurred on Friday. The latest fatalities come as a massive hunt continues for a rogue Afghan soldier who killed three UK troops.
"Using the UK's aid budget to secure progress in Afghanistan will be my number one priority," Mitchell will say tomorrow.
The new emphasis at DfID would appear to be at odds with recent comments by the defence secretary, Liam Fox, who said: "We are not in Afghanistan for the sake of the education policy in a broken, 13th-century country. We are there so the people of Britain and our global interests are not threatened."
Mitchell's approach will please many in his own party who dislike the ringfencing of the aid budget, but is proving controversial with some aid agencies, which do not want the aid budget to be used for what they see as military-related goals.
"Aid should be about helping the most needy, but it's not any more," one charity head told the Observer. "It's about backing up the country's political leaders, and I don't think taxpayers expect money taken to help the world's poor to be propping up the government's military affairs."
Mitchell will insist, however, that by pumping in more aid to Afghanistan the goals of stability and a UK withdrawal can be achieved more quickly. "I am determined to back up the efforts of our armed forces as we work towards a withdrawal of combat troops," he will say. "Nowhere is the case clearer of why well-spent aid overseas is in our national interest than in Afghanistan. The UK is there to prevent the Afghan territory from again being used by al-Qaida as a base from which to plan attacks on the UK and our allies. While the military bring much-needed security, peace will only be achieved through political progress backed by development."
Alongside an increase in the size and pace of UK aid efforts, Mitchell will set out steps to ensure the UK's work in Afghanistan is more effective. President Hamid Karzai will announce a timetable for a "conditions-based and phased transition" at the international conference on Afghanistan to be held in Kabul on Tuesday. British troops are to pull out by 2014, according to a leaked communiqué obtained by the Independent on Sunday.