Afghanistan

US troops could stay in Afghanistan until 2024 - security pact

_{The US and Afghanistan have reportedly agreed on the draft of a mutual security pact indicating that US troops could remain in the country until 2024, according to Afghanistan. However, the US insists that some final details still need to be clarified.}

RT,

19 November, 2013

Afghan politicians and tribal leaders will meet in two days to vote on the new agreement.

Although the final text of the agreement is expected to be presented to the grand council on Thursday, it still needs some final touches a US State Department spokeswoman said. “There are still some final issues we are working through… We are not there yet,” she said according to Reuters.

While the 25-page “Security and Defense Cooperation Agreement Between the United States of America and the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan” is still unsigned, the deal displays a willingness of the US to retain their military outposts for many years while continuing to pay to support Afghan security forces.

The presence of up to 15,000 American troops could potentially last until 2024, according to the document, which was released for public viewing by NBC News.

Without such an accord however, the US might have to pull out from Afghanistan by the end of 2014, as among other things the agreement regulates its troops’ immunity from Afghan law.

The early draft of the document states that “The Parties acknowledge that continued US military operations to defeat al-Qaeda and its affiliates may be appropriate and agree to continue their close cooperation and coordination toward that end.”

It also attempted to clarify the on-going contentious issue of whether the US military would be permitted to search civilian homes.

And according to paragraph 4, the deal “may be terminated by mutual written agreement or by either Party upon two years' written notice.”

A screenshot from msnbcmedia.msn.com

In a phone call on Tuesday, US Secretary of State John Kerry asked Afghan President Hamid Karzai that US troops be permitted to enter Afghan homes in “exceptional” circumstances, according to AP. Aimal Faizi, a Karzai spokesman, in response stated that any “extraordinary circumstances” could not be misused.

Earlier reports suggested that Karzai rejected a provision granting the United States authority to unilaterally carry out military operations within the country, including the search of civilian homes.

The NBC document is dated July 25, 2013, which accounts for some discrepancies in the document’s terms with the official statement. Hamid Karzai has long vocally expressed objections to US troops being permitted to enter homes and US troop immunity to Afghan law. However, the US maintained that both conditions are essential.

According to Faizi, the wording of these conditions was agreed upon during Tuesday’s phone conversation.

Such concessions from Karzai became possible after “both sides agreed that Obama will send a letter ... assuring the President and the people of Afghanistan that the right to enter into Afghan homes by US forces and the extraordinary circumstances will not be misused,” Faizi told Reuters.

Obama’s letter recognizing the damage done to the country’s civilians during the 12 year war will be presented to the Afghan grand assembly in an effort to gain popular support for a widely opposed deal.

“The whole idea of having a letter was to acknowledge the suffering of the Afghan people and the mistakes of the past. That was the only thing that satisfied the President,” Faizi said.

Later this week, thousands of Afghan political and tribal leaders will meet to decide whether to allow US troops to remain in the country following the 2014 withdrawal of foreign fighting forces.

The five-day long negotiations of the so-called Loya Jirga grand assembly are to begin on Thursday.

But even if the deal is approved by some 3,000 prominent Afghans, which is not guaranteed, the final decision will be made by the parliament after the convention.

Obama administration mulls retaliation

Obama break up with Karzai? US considers total Afghanistan pullout

The Obama administration is considering a quick ‘zero option’ withdrawal from Afghanistan after relations with the Karzai administration have degraded to a record low, the NYT reports. With no US troops left, Kabul would be left to face the Taliban alone.

RT,

9 July, 2013

Stern words between the American and Afghan presidents during a videoconference arranged to ease tensions between the countries could bring painful consequences.

For the first time ever Karzai has dared to accuse Obama to his face of conducting an unfair game.

The videoconference was organized on June 27 to get the parties’ positions closer on the matter of Taliban contacts and troop withdrawals, but the talks ended in a bad way, the New York Times reported, referring to American and European sources.

According to the paper’s sources among both American and Afghan officials, Karzai accused Washington of leaving its ally all alone against its enemies - the Taliban and its sponsors in Pakistan - while US diplomats attempt to negotiate safe withdrawal of the US troops from Afghanistan.

Talking to his compatriots, Karzai has already voiced such accusations before, saying that talks in Doha gave Taliban insurgents a legitimacy they have not deserved, but this time something forced him to be brutally honest with the American president.

In response, Obama pointed out to Karzai that American soldiers have been paying with their lives to prop up the regime in the country. Apparently the tete-a-tete may also have forced the American leader to change his mind on the timing of a pullout from Afghanistan.

Last month Washington started separate negotiations with Taliban in Doha, Qatar, a move Kabul regards as betrayal. Once the Karzai administration learnt about the separate talks in Doha, it immediately ended negotiations with the US over keeping some US troops in Afghanistan after official withdrawal by the end of 2014.

Karzai stressed there will be no talks until Taliban representatives contact Kabul directly, which may put the Americans in a position when they have to organize talks between Karzai and the Taliban.

"As long as the peace process is not Afghan-led, the High Peace Council will not participate in the talks in Qatar," Karzai said in a statement in June, referring to a government body he created in 2010 to seek a negotiated peace with the Taliban.

Putting Taliban and Karzai behind a negotiating table might be a hard task for the US to pull because previously the Taliban refused to negotiate with the Karzai government, deriding it as a puppet of the United States and its NATO allies.

If previously a total withdrawal from Afghanistan ‘to the last man’, like the US did in Iraq, was regarded as a last option and was used as leverage to apply additional pressure on Karzai’s government, now it is on the table for real.

“There’s always been a zero option, but it was not seen as the main option,” a senior Western official in Kabul told NYT.

“It is maybe now being seen as a realistic path,” the same official said, “They’re learning now, not later, when it’s going to be too late.”

However itchy to leave Afghanistan the American authorities might be, the legacy of over 10 years of war in Afghanistan would not be so easily left behind.

“Washington could potentially pull the vast majority of its troops out of Afghanistan, but given the instability of the country, it would be strange if every single solider was withdrawn, leaving various American diplomatic compounds unsecured,” political analyst Nile Bowie told RT.

There is an “underlying jab” at Karzai in Obama’s early pullout initiative, given the fact that Karzai has called for US troops to remain as a residual military training force, Bowie explained.

He pointed out that presidential elections are scheduled to take place in Afghanistan in April 2014, and the current regime “likely views American presence on the ground as a counterweight to the Taliban.”

“Either way, the vast majority occupying forces will soon depart, leaving behind a state where none of their initial goals have been realized, so it shouldn’t surprise anyone if Afghanistan in 2014 starts looking a lot like Iraq today,” Bowie concluded.

On top of all, the Afghani government remains on the US payroll and at least half of the country’s budget consists of the American funding, it is hard to imagine how President Karzai’s government is going to make ends meet while confronting Taliban.

Still, senior Afghan officials close to Karzai have already expressed their skepticism regarding full American withdrawal from the region, Reuters reports.

"Both sides understand how to pressure each other. But both the US and Afghanistan fully understand the need for foreign troops, especially US ones, to stay beyond 2014 and that it is vital for security here and in the wider region," a senior official close to Karzai told Reuters on Tuesday on condition of anonymity.

"We don't think the US will compromise on that, because past experience of abandoning Afghanistan was that the country descended into chaos," the official added, recalling the civil war in the country that followed the 1989 Soviet withdrawal.

Other Afghan politicians have dubbed the US early pullout initiative ‘propaganda’.

"The US officials saying they are considering leaving no troops behind after 2014 is just propaganda to put pressure on Afghan government so Washington can get an outcome it wants in a bilateral security pact,” former Karzai political adviser Nasrullah Stanikzai told Reuters, adding that tensions between Obama and Karzai prevent Afghan government from pursuing country’s strategic and political interests.

A senior official of the Obama administration originally told Reuters that “All options remain on the table but a decision is far from made.”

It was announced earlier that most of 63,000 American troops would be out of Afghanistan by the end of 2014, with the first half to leave the country by February 2014. According to the NYT, now the Obama administration would not mind to have them all out by summer 2014.

On Tuesday, the Pentagon clarified to Reuters that the president has not yet decided on how many troops if any will remain after 2014, although the option of a total pullout remains open for consideration. Pentagon spokesperson George Little declined to provide the media with any comment on what recommendation Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel will make to Mr. Obama, but White House spokesperson Jay Carney said it was possible Obama would adopt a "zero option" that would involve all troops leaving Afghanistan by the end of next year. Carney said the exact number of troops left, if any, would rely on a negotiation between the US and Afghan government.

Still it remains unclear whether the US generals would support the idea of withdrawing ahead of the schedule, taking into consideration heavy logistics and security matters.

Because the US troops make up the cornerstone of the international contingent in Afghanistan, the other participating countries are highly unlikely to keep their forces in the country once the Americans are gone.

Today the news from Afghanistan resembles a lull before a storm. There are no major battles and operations, but foreign servicemen continue to die regularly as Taliban insurgents continue to attack the allied forces and Afghan governmental residences.

Last month the US handed the security control in the country to the Afghan national army and police force. Still, over a dozen American troops were killed in Afghanistan in June.

Karzai on CIA payroll

Karzai admits to being on secret US payroll

Top Afghan officials have been on the CIA’s payroll for over a decade, receiving tens of millions of US dollars in cash. Afghan President Hamid Karzai admitted to receiving the clandestine financial support, but dismissed the sum as a “small amount.”

RT

29 April, 2013

A New York Times report has revealed that unparalleled corruption in the Afghan government has been encouraged by the US Central Intelligence Agency. Since the start of the decade-long war, CIA agents have delivered cash to Afghan officials in “suitcases, backpacks and, on occasion, plastic shopping bags.”

“We called it ‘ghost money,’” said Khalil Roman, President Hamid Karzai’s former chief of staff from 2002 to 2005, adding that it “came in secret, and it left in secret.” There is no evidence that President Karzai was a recipient of any of the money, as Afghan officials claim the cash was distributed by president’s National Security Council, the report said.

S Soldiers from the 234th Infantry Division, Fort Riley, Kansas board a plane to Afghanistan from the US transit center Manas 30kms from Bishkek (AFP Photo)

Some senior National Security Council officials have also been on the CIA’s payroll, and the payoffs have only increased over time: “We paid them to overthrow the Taliban,” a US official told the NYT.

Cash was also paid out to lesser Afghan politicians and officials reportedly connected to drug production and trafficking, those with alleged ties to the Taliban, and to insurgent warlords bribed not to interfere in covert operations. “They [CIA] will work with criminals if they think they have to,” a former US official said.

On Monday Afghan President Hamid Karzai Monday acknowledged his office had been receiving funds from the CIA over the past decade, but dismissed the monthly cash payments as “a small amount,” the Wall Street Journal reports.

"Yes, the office of the national security has been receiving support from the United States for the past 10 years," the daily cites Karzai as telling reporters at a news briefing in Helsinki, Finland. "Monthly. Not a big amount. A small amount which has been used for various purposes," he continued.

Karzai said the CIA funds had been used on “various, operational purposes of providing assistance to the wounded, the sick, to certain rents for houses, to all other purposes."

Neither the CIA nor the US State Department commented on the report.

Once the invasion began in 2001 the CIA paid cash to buy the services of numerous warlords, one of whom was allegedly Afghanistan’s first vice president, Muhammad Qasim Fahim. Another Afghan official on the CIA payroll was President Karzai’s half-brother Ahmed Wali Karzai, who headed the anti-insurgent Kandahar Strike Force militia until he was assassinated in 2011.

By late 2002 the payments were being routed through the president’s office, allowing Karzai to buy off the warlords’ loyalty, a former presidential adviser told the NYT.

“The biggest source of corruption in Afghanistan, was the United States,” an anonymous US official said.

Adding to the apparently suspicious nature of the CIA bribery program in Afghanistan, the NYT said that the cash “does not appear to be subject to the oversight and restrictions placed on official American aid to the country or even the CIA’s formal assistance programs, like financing Afghan intelligence agencies.”

Starting in 2002, Iran also attempted to buy off officials in the Karzai government, paying them in cash for assistance. The scheme continued for a decade, but Tehran was ultimately outmatched by the Washington in terms of sheer spending power and the standing of the US Dollar.

In 2010, leaked reports of Tehran paying off Afghani officials forced President Karzai to acknowledge that “The United States is doing the same thing. They are providing cash to some of our offices.” Tehran reportedly continued to pay off officials within Karzai’s inner circle – spending about $10 million a year – until 2012, when Karzai signed a strategic partnership deal with the US.

Iran ceased their payoffs, but the CIA continued to buy Afghan support for its clandestine front in the War on Terror.

In December 2012, President Karzai criticized US tactics in Afghanistan, accusing American forces of contributing to violence and corruption in his country: "Now whether this corruption in Afghanistan is an accident, a byproduct of the situation in the past 10 years or is it perpetrated also on purpose is today my main question."