Post-2014 stategic pact negotiations: night raids

U.S. Offers Concessions on Afghan Night RaidsBy Adam Entous
March 20, 2012
The Wall Street Journal

WASHINGTON - The Obama administration is offering to cede some control over nighttime missions into Afghan village homes, U.S. officials say, in a bid to ease tensions with Afghan President Hamid Karzai that took on new urgency with the deadly rampage in a Kandahar village last week.

The administration's most significant proposed concession on night raids would subject the operations to advance review by Afghan judges, U.S. military officials said. One option under discussion in U.S.-Afghan talks would require warrants to be issued before operations get the green light.

The so-called night raids by U.S. special-operations forces have long been a source of division between President Barack Obama and Mr. Karzai, and have been a stumbling block in negotiations on the role of the U.S. in Afghanistan after most troops pull out at the end of 2014.

The U.S. military says it considers night raids to be the most effective way of degrading the Taliban's command-and-control infrastructure, with minimal civilian casualties. There were nearly 2,500 such raids in the last year, military officials said.

Mr. Karzai has said repeatedly that the raids must stop, calling them an invasion of Afghan homes and a violation of taboos about Afghan women mingling with unrelated men. They also create a heightened risk of civilian casualties, he says.

U.S. officials say they don't know if the proposed concessions will satisfy Mr. Karzai, especially after the shooting rampage and other incidents in which U.S. service members urinated on Taliban corpses and burned Qurans, the Muslim holy book.

The massacre that killed 16 Afghan villagers on March 11 infuriated Afghans and led Mr. Karzai to call for new restrictions on Western military operations in the countryside.

"The threshold for agreements with Karzai may have gone way up," said a senior U.S. defense official.

Afghan officials in Kabul and the U.S. couldn't be reached for comment on Monday on the negotiations.

Reaching a deal on night raids became the top priority for U.S. negotiators after a March 9 agreement was announced to transfer the main U.S.-run detention facility to Afghan control over the next six months.

U.S. officials said the shooting rampage two days later set back the talks on a so-called strategic partnership agreement with Afghanistan. The Obama administration wants such a strategic partnership in time for a meeting of North Atlantic Treaty Organization allies in May.

Mr. Obama and top military leaders have in the past rebuffed previous demands by Mr. Karzai to stop night raids. But with the U.S. now drawing down troops, a senior military official said "both sides understand the importance of finding a way ahead here that meets both sets of requirements."

Top commanders have sharply expanded the number of hunt-and-kill teams in recent years in a bid to take militant leaders off the battlefield and make it harder for the Taliban to mount attacks.

A senior U.S. military official said a shift to a warrant-based approach to the raids was meant to address Mr. Karzai's demands for the U.S. to respect Afghan sovereignty.

U.S. officials said they are talking to the Afghans about what type of legal panel could be set up to process these requests in a timely way.

A senior defense official said the options under discussion weren't in direct response to recent events that have soured relations. "Night operations have been of concern to certain Afghan officials, notably President Karzai, for some time," the official said.

Officials compared the proposed changes to the transition in Iraq, where in 2009 the U.S. agreed to seek legal approval before targeted raids.

"The idea is to start to transition not only to an Afghan lead, but to more of a law-enforcement approach," the official said. "It's very much in keeping with the rule of law that any sovereign nation ought to have."

U.S. officials have said they are working to have almost all night raids led by Afghan troops—part of a hand-over of security responsibility to the Afghans, now due to assume the combat lead in 2013. U.S. officials say the shift should be done gradually as Afghan personnel become better trained.

The U.S. wants Afghan commandos, not U.S. forces, to enter Afghan homes and compounds whenever possible, U.S. military and administration officials said.

The U.S. wants to preserve the authority to go after al Qaeda cells, preferably in partnership with Afghan forces but also unilaterally, if the terrorist group tries to make a comeback in Afghanistan after U.S. combat troops leave at the end of 2014, U.S. officials said.

The U.S. currently has the right to conduct military operations in Afghanistan whenever it wants. An agreement on night raids would amount to a pledge not to exercise that authority unilaterally.

U.S. officials cautioned that night-raid negotiations were particularly sensitive because of the recent tensions, and that a deal depended largely on whether Mr. Karzai can be persuaded to accept what the U.S. is offering.

American officials said they believed they were close to a deal on night raids before the alleged rampage by U.S. Army Staff Sgt. Robert Bales.

The officials said they believed the terms of a proposed agreement on night raids has the support of Afghan military leaders, who have indicated to U.S. counterparts that they agree on the value of such operations in taking out mid- and high-level Taliban leaders and fighters.

Several officials said they remained cautiously optimistic that a binding memorandum of understanding on night raids would be reached with Mr. Karzai within weeks, clearing the way for the sides to complete the strategic partnership agreement.

"Both sides are negotiating in good faith despite this tragedy," a senior defense official said.

The biggest wild card may be Mr. Karzai, who has railed repeatedly in recent days against the U.S.

U.S. officials say Mr. Karzai has sought to use the strategic partnership talks to push through restrictions on what U.S. and NATO forces can do in Afghanistan between now and the end of 2014.

Earlier this month, the U.S. and Afghanistan agreed to transfer the main U.S.-run detention facility in the country to Afghan control over the next six months. The U.S. had initially sought more time to make the transition. Officials said the U.S. might have to make similar concessions on night raids.

Administration officials said the proposal to give Afghans greater say over night raids would fit with a broader transition that would see U.S. and NATO troops assume a support and advisory role next year before most of them leave the country at the end of 2014.

Afghan security forces already have the lead in providing security in large swaths of the country.

U.S. military officials dispute Mr. Karzai's contention that the raids kill too many civilians. In the nearly 2,500 nighttime operations conducted in the year ended in February, they said, 10 civilians were killed.

"These [nighttime operations] are enormously successful in terms of rolling up the kinds of people we need to be rolling up. And they work," a senior military official said. "But we want to Afghan-ize these types of operations." —Julian E. Barnes contributed to this article.