The US House of Representatives approved a bill to allocate about $59 billion to finance operations in Afghanistan and Iraq, as well as to help Haiti, which suffered a strong earthquake, and a number of domestic programs.

Of the total amount, more than $37 billion is allocated for operations in Afghanistan and Iraq, Radio Liberty reports.

Let us remind you that this bill was already passed by the US Senate in July 2010. It is now being submitted to President Barack Obama for signature.

According to the US government's strategic plans, the campaign should begin this summer, its goal is to pacify the population of southern Afghanistan, a region considered a siege point for militants, who have rebelled against the actions of united international troops. The outcome of the entire nine-year conflict may depend on the outcome of this campaign, but at the same time it may lead to an increase in the number of victims.

The spending program is limited primarily to military operations, foreign aid, medical care for Vietnam veterans, and disaster relief.

In the meantime, the US and other NATO countries continue to build up troops in Afghanistan - by September the total number of their troops should exceed 150 thousand people.

The Obama administration hopes that strengthening the NATO military contingent in Afghanistan will make it possible to more effectively fight the Taliban and begin the process of transferring responsibility for ensuring security to the Afghan authorities as early as July 2011.

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It should be noted that the increase in funding for the war in Afghanistan coincided with a scandal about declassified data. A series of materials based on secret documents from the American military about the war in Afghanistan were published in foreign media, the BBC reports. Publications appeared in the British newspaper Guardian, the American New York Times and the German Der Spiegel.

This information leak has already been called the largest in US history. More than 90 thousand reports and intelligence reports on the progress of the conflict were obtained by the owners of the Wikileaks website, which specializes in publishing data from such leaks. The declassified information makes it possible to understand how much worse the real situation in Afghanistan is than what official sources report.

It is reported that classified materials were used by the Pentagon to draw up plans for new operations and prepare briefings on the situation in the conflict zone. The source of the leak is unknown.

In general, according to published data, coalition forces are losing the war, the military is killing hundreds of Afghan civilians without information about this becoming public knowledge, the number of attacks by the Taliban is increasing, and NATO commanders fear that Pakistan and Iran are maintaining instability in the region.

In particular, the documents show that Pakistani intelligence services are helping the Taliban, although Pakistan receives more than $1 billion from the United States for assistance in combating unrest in the region.

The reaction from the White House was not long in coming and, as usual, turned out to be very negative. The administration of Barack Obama harshly criticized the site's owners for the decision to publish classified documents, among other things, due to the fact that the data endangers the lives of military personnel and informants in the region.

However, the authorities had to make excuses - an official statement from the White House said that the picture of chaos that the published secret documents paint took place before the start of the implementation of Barack Obama's new Afghan strategy. “It is important to note that the documents relate to the period between 2004 and 2009,” the government says.

But the most important thing is that the authorities do not question the published data. In turn, the media that published classified materials report that they are declassifying information “without naming specific names” so as not to harm national security.

Regarding Barack Obama's new strategy, it is worth recalling the recent scandal associated with the behavior of the former commander of NATO forces in Afghanistan, General Stanley McChrystal, who in an interview sharply criticized the US President and his administration for their actions in Afghanistan.

For this, the disgraced general was dismissed from his post and will soon retire.

US allocates $37 billion for war in Afghanistan and Iraq