US Envoy: Karzai Unlikely to Meet New Deadline on Troop Deal

US Envoy: Karzai Unlikely to Meet New Deadline on Troop Deal

US Keeps Setting Ultimatums, But Afghans Stand Firm

by Jason Ditz, January 09, 2014

After missing the Obama Administration’s “ultimatum” to sign the Bilateral Security Agreement (BSA) by the end of December, officials told the Karzai government they wanted it done within “weeks, not months.”

Now, US Ambassador James Cunningham is admitting that the Karzai government is “unlikely” to meet that deadline either, saying he thinks Karzai will stick to his initial pledge not to sign until after the April vote.

The BSA would govern the US occupation of Afghanistan “through 2024 and beyond,” and Karzai has repeatedly said he won’t sign the deal before the election, which ends his term in office.

Karzai had been pushing for the US to make pledges to end night raids and drone strikes, citing the growing civilian casualties, while the US demands the deal be signed exactly as written.

Though the Obama Administration has made it clear they want the BSA signed as soon as possible, it is unclear why they keep going public with ultimatums that they don’t believe Karzai will accept, and coupling them with threats to withdraw that they have no intention of following through on.

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US Envoy: Karzai Unlikely to Meet New Deadline on Troop Deal

Why Karzai Is Stonewalling A Security Agreement With US

Afghan President Hamid Karzai is being depicted in the media as an obstinate spoiler who is sabotaging America’s plans for a decade or more of continued U.S. military occupation of Afghanistan by refusing to sign a status of forces agreement (SOFA) governing future troop presence. Who knows, maybe he is an obstinate saboteur. But his stated reasons for thwarting a security deal in the lead up to the scheduled 2014 drawdown are substantive.

I’ve written before about how ironic it is that the sticking point on a SOFA is whether U.S. troops will be granted legal immunity from Afghan law, since it kind of implies expectations on both sides that U.S. soldiers will continue to commit crimes. And yes, the security deal does hinge on this question of legal jurisdiction, but there is a more literal reason to stall the agreement.

This ably reported piece in the Los Angeles Times puts Karzai’s reluctance to sign a deal in the context of continued civilian casualties caused by U.S. troops. A September drone strike, the article explains, killed 14 people who residents say were civilians and U.S. officials say were Taliban.

“There were pieces of my family all over the road,” said Jan, recalling the deadly Sept. 7 late afternoon incident in an interview last week. “I picked up those pieces from the road and from the truck and wrapped them in a sheet to bury them.

“Do the American people want to spend their money this way, on drones that kill our women and children?” he asked.

The repercussions of such strikes are felt far beyond the dark escarpments of Kunar province. The grief and rage of Jan and his relatives help explain the approval among some Afghans of President Hamid Karzai’s thus far non-negotiable demand that civilian casualties cease if he is to sign a proposed 10-year security agreement with the United States.

Karzai responded to the Kunar attack by accusing the United States of recklessness and callous disregard for innocent Afghans. After a child died in a drone strike Thursday in southern Afghanistan, Karzai suggested that the attack had ended any chance of an accord.

Civilian deaths at the hands of U.S. forces have long poisoned Karzai’s relationship with the United States. That antagonism has hardened this month into a vise that could abruptly end America’s 12-year, multibillion-dollar investment in Afghanistan, despite a decline in civilian casualties due to new safeguards by foreign forces.

Under current agreements, U.S. forces operate under the legal jurisdiction of the U.S. military, which makes it next to impossible for Afghans to seek recourse for operations that scatter their family’s body parts all over the road. And as the last decade of occupation has indisputably demonstrated, the U.S. typically has a rather blasé attitude about investigating and prosecuting crimes committed by American soldiers.

This has led the Obama administration to, once again, threaten a “zero option,” in which all U.S. troops are pulled out in 2014 as they were in Iraq in 2011. The administration quite clearly wants to avoid this, but they aren’t about to leave U.S. troops to the Afghan legal system. So, the zero option is a real possibility – a good thing for everyone, including Afghan civilians.

“The possibility of a military presence into 2024 is unacceptable,” says Representative Barbara Lee (D-CA). “There is no military solution in Afghanistan. After 13 years and more than $ 778 billion invested in an unstable country and the corrupt Karzai government, it’s time to bring our troops and tax dollars home.”

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Why Karzai Is Stonewalling A Security Agreement With US

Donilon: "Reckless" For Karzai Not To Sign US-Afghanistan Deal

Tom Donilon, former national security adviser to President Obama, on Sunday said that Afghan President Hamid Karzai’s refusal to sign a security agreement with the U.S. would be “reckless.”

“His refusal to sign at this point I think is reckless,” Donilon said on ABC’s “This Week.” “I think it’s reckless in terms of Afghanistan, and I think it also adversely impacts our ability to plan coherently and comprehensively for post-2014.”

Donilon emphasized that leaders in Afghanistan approve of the security pact.

“President Karzai should go ahead and sign the agreement. It’s been approved by a very large assembly of leaders in Afghanistan,” he said. “2,500 leaders got together, looked at the proposed agreement with the United States, after December 31, 2014, and asked — and recommended to President Karzai that he sign it.”

Without Karzai’s approval of continued American support, all 51,000 troops would have to head home by the end of 2014, which Donilon said would be a mistake.

“We think at the end of the day, it will be better to have continued support for the Afghan national forces and have a small counter-terrorism presence in Afghanistan,” he said.

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Donilon: "Reckless" For Karzai Not To Sign US-Afghanistan Deal

US to Karzai: Sign deal or else troops will leave

New statements from Hamid Karzai, president of Afghanistan, are putting the new security pact between U.S. and Afghanistan keeping American troops in the country for more than a decade from being implemented.

By Aarne Heikkila and Alastair Jamieson, NBC News

KABUL, Afghanistan –The White House threatened to withdraw all U.S. troops from Afghanistan next year, after President Hamid Karzai refused to sign a new bilateral security agreement.

The two countries remain deadlocked over future military involvement after an unsuccessful working dinner between Ambassador Susan Rice and Karzai at his palace in Kabul on Monday night.

In a statement, the White House said Karzai had outlined new conditions for a deal “and indicated he is not prepared to sign the BSA promptly.”

S. Sabawoon / EPA

Afghan President Hamid Karzai speaks to the Loya Jirga on Sunday.

“Ambassador Rice reiterated that, without a prompt signature, the U.S. would have no choice but to initiate planning for a post-2014 future in which there would be no U.S. or NATO troop presence in Afghanistan,” the statement said.

The dinner meeting came at the end of Rice’s three-day trip to Afghanistan to visit American troops and civilians and to assess conditions in the country.

On Sunday, a grand council of Afghan tribal leaders – the Loya Jirga – voted to accept the BSA, but Karzai has since indicated he may not sign it until Afghanistan has elected a new president in March. 

The White House statement added: “Ambassador Rice conveyed the overwhelming and moving support she found among all the Afghans with whom she met for an enduring U.S.-Afghan partnership and for the prompt signing of the BSA.

“In closing, Rice highlighted the American people’s friendship and support for the people of Afghanistan as embodied in the extraordinary sacrifices of our service-men and women and the unprecedented investment Americans have made in Afghanistan.”

In Afghanistan, there are still 47,000 American forces. The U.S. has been in discussions with Afghan officials about keeping a small residual force of about 8,000 troops there after it winds down operations next year.

U.S. officials, including Secretary of State John Kerry and Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel, have said the BSA must be signed by year-end to begin preparations for a post-2014 presence.

Karzai spokesman Aimal Faizi said the Afghan leader laid out several conditions for his signature to the deal in the meeting, including a U.S. pledge to immediately halt all military raids on, or searches of, Afghan homes.

The agreement includes a provision allowing raids in exceptional circumstances – when an American life is directly under threat – but it would not take effect until 2015.

“It is vitally important that there is no more killing of Afghan civilians by U.S. forces and Afghans want to see this practically,” Faizi said, according to Reuters.

Karzai also called on Washington to send remaining Afghan detainees at the U.S. military detention center in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, back to Afghanistan, saying that the Loya Jirga had endorsed the pact with this condition.

Alastair Jamieson reported from London. Reuters contributed to this report.

Related

• Afghan leader says peace needed before US security deal


• As Karzai wavers, US gives Afghanistan year-end deadline for security deal


• Karzai says US troops could stay a decade or more, White House says its undecided

This story was originally published on Tue Nov 26, 2013 10:09 AM EST

US to Karzai: Sign deal or else troops will leave

Pentagon urges Karzai to sign troop plan quickly

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Pentagon is urging Afghan President Hamid Karzai to quickly sign a long-delayed security agreement that would keep some U.S. troops in the country after most foreign forces draw down in 2014.

The Afghan leader is insisting that the winner of the country’s April 5 election be the one to sign the deal — despite a vote Sunday by an Afghan assembly to go ahead with the agreement.

Col. Steven Warren, a Defense Department spokesman, said Monday that it’s very difficult for the U.S. to plan troop movements if the deal is not sealed by year’s end.

Warren told reporters the Pentagon hopes he signs the agreement “as quickly as possible.”

Associated Press

Copyright 2013 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

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Pentagon urges Karzai to sign troop plan quickly

VIDEO: Afghan President Karzai: I Won"t Sign Deal With U.S.

Afghan President Hamid Karzai said he won’t sign a deal with the U.S. until after the April 2014 elections in his country. This could derail plans to limit American and allied military involvement in Afghanistan. Mark Jacobson discusses. Photo: Getty Images.

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VIDEO: Afghan President Karzai: I Won"t Sign Deal With U.S.

US arrest of Taliban leader ‘enrages’ Afghan president Karzai

Published time: October 12, 2013 13:31

U.S. troops, part of the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF), arrive at the site of a suicide attack in Maidan Shar, the capital of Wardak province, September 8, 2013.(Reuters / Omar Sobhani)

US forces detained Taliban commander Latif Mehsud, the US State Department said Friday, an announcement that has reportedly infuriated Afghan president Hamid Karzai, who hoped to use Mehsud as interlocutor for peace talks.

During a military operation in the Logar province in eastern Afghanistan, US troops seized Mehsud, identified as a senior commander in the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan, a group that claimed responsibility for a 2010 attempted bombing in Times Square, New York.

“Mehsud is a senior commander in [Tehreek-e-Taliban], and served as a trusted confident of the group’s leader, Hakimullah Mehsud,” Marie Harf, deputy spokeswoman for the US State Department, said in Washington on Friday. The group “claimed responsibility… for the attempted bombing of Times Square in 2010 and has vowed to attack the US homeland again. TPP is also responsible for attacking our diplomats in Pakistan and attacks that have killed countless Pakistani civilians.”

Pakistani intelligence said US forces seized Mehsud while he was with the Afghan army, and that they no longer know where he is.

According to reports, the arrest, which actually occurred several weeks ago, enraged Afghan President Karzai, as Afghan intelligence agents had spent months attempting to recruit Mehsud as a mediator for peace talks between Kabul and the Taliban, the Washington Post reported.

Karzai also apparently viewed the arrest of the Taliban leader as a violation of Afghan sovereignty, a senior Afghan official told AP on condition of anonymity.

News of the detention surfaced as US Secretary of State John Kerry was in Kabul attempting to hammer out a security agreement with the Afghan government that would permit the US to keep 5,000 to 10,000 US troops in the country when the US combat mission comes to an end on Dec. 31, 2014.

Kerry was being accompanied on his trip by US Ambassador to Afghanistan James Cunningham and Gen. Joseph Dunford, the top US general in Afghanistan.

“This is really about us building momentum for the negotiators and helping establish conditions for success of the negotiations going forward,” a State Department official told reporters traveling with Kerry.

President Barack Obama told AP in an interview last week that he would be willing to keep a US troop presence in Afghanistan after the NATO mission comes to a close, but acknowledged that doing so would require an agreement with Karzai’s government .

Obama said that if no agreement could be reached, he would be comfortable with a full pullout of US troops: the so-called “zero option.” Of the 87,000 NATO troops now in Afghanistan, 52,000 are American.

Negotiations have been going on between Afghan and US officials on a bilateral security agreement for a year, so far without success.

Relations between Karzai and Washington have been rocky over the years since the US-led invasion and occupation of the country in 2001. Karzai has said he suspects Washington of doing a deal with the Taliban behind his back.

In March, following two Taliban bombings that killed 17 people, Karzai accused the United States and the Taliban of working together to convince Afghans that NATO forces were needed beyond 2014.

“Those bombs, set off yesterday in the name of the Taliban, were in the service of Americans to keep foreigners longer in Afghanistan,” Karzai told reporters.

RT – News

US arrest of Taliban leader ‘enrages’ Afghan president Karzai

VIDEO: Kerry, Karzai To Have 3rd Round Of Afghan Talks

Kerry and Karzai extended talks Saturday on a bilateral security agreement with the U.S.

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VIDEO: Kerry, Karzai To Have 3rd Round Of Afghan Talks

Karzai, angry over Taliban"s Qatar office, quits peace, security talks

(CNN) — Afghanistan has suspended security talks with the United States, Afghan President Hamid Karzai’s office said Wednesday.

“In view of the contradiction between acts and the statements made by the United States of America in regard to the Peace Process, the Afghan government suspended the negotiations,” his office said.

Washington has been negotiating a bilateral security agreement with Afghanistan which would dictate the terms of an extension for U.S. troops past 2014 and could provide the basis for any future NATO role.

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Karzai, angry over Taliban"s Qatar office, quits peace, security talks

Obama and Karzai discuss Afghan War in DC

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