Talks Bog Down On US-Afghan Agreement
by The Associated Press [via NPR]
Associated Press Writer Rahim Faiez in Kabul contributed to this report
March 5, 2012, 02:59 pm ET
KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) — Negotiations over a long-term U.S. military presence in Afghanistan have bogged down over issues of detainees, night raids and quarrels within the Afghan president's inner circle, throwing the whole deal into question.
The arrangement would formalize a U.S. role after NATO's planned pullout in 2014. The deadlock reflects growing hostility on the part of the Afghan leadership and increasing exasperation in Washington.
Trust has eroded in recent days with anti-American protests over Quran burnings at a U.S. base, a rising number of U.S. troops gunned down by Afghan security forces and election-year demands to bring the troops home.
Karzai met Monday evening with U.S. Ambassador Ryan Crocker, but a Karzai spokesman did not return phone calls requesting details about their talks. Karzai has scheduled a news conference on Tuesday; it is unclear whether he will discuss the negotiations.
U.S. Embassy spokesman Gavin Sundwall would not disclose any information about the meeting.
Earlier, Sundwall said that despite the dragging negotiations, the U.S. was committed to a strategic partnership with the Afghan people. However, he also said it was more important to get the right agreement than to get an agreement.
The pact is expected to provide for several thousand U.S. troops to stay and train Afghan forces and help with counterterrorism operations. It aims to outline the legal status of those forces, their operating rules and where they will be based. The agreement, which was supposed to be completed before the next NATO summit in May in Chicago, also is seen as means of assuring the Afghan people that the U.S. does not plan to abandon the country, even as it withdraws its combat forces.
NATO's nighttime raids targeting insurgents are an especially touchy matter.
As part of the agreement, Karzai has said that Afghans should be the only ones conducting the night raids, because the invasion of privacy from troops entering a family's home is compounded when the soldiers are Westerners. He has also complained that too many raids have resulted in the detention of non-insurgents or civilian deaths. NATO argues that no shots are fired in more than 85 percent of the raids.
An even thornier issue is detentions. Karzai is demanding that the United States transfer control of its main prison in the country — the Parwan Detention Facility, which adjoins Bagram Air Field in eastern Afghanistan — to Afghan control. Karzai thinks having the United States running prisons in his country is an affront to Afghan sovereignty. First he demanded that the prison be handed over by early February, then extended the deadline to this Friday.
The Obama administration has said that the Afghan judicial system is not yet capable of taking over responsibility for dangerous battlefield detainees. The U.S. is willing to work with the Karzai government to complete a transition of detention operations "in a manner that is safe and orderly and in accordance with our international legal obligations," Sundwall said.
Afghan officials say privately that a U.S. proposal to hand over the facility in six months would be acceptable to some members of the Karzai government, but the president had not embraced the idea.
Karzai tried to bolster his argument by citing the incident on Feb. 20, when Qurans and other Islamic texts from a library at the Parwan Detention Facility were burned. He said that if Afghans had been running the prison, Muslim holy books would never had been sent to a garbage burn pit.
The incident, which Afghans viewed as evidence that foreign forces disregard their culture and Islamic faith, prompted six days of anti-American protests across the nation. During the demonstrations, 30 people died, including six U.S. troops who were killed when Afghan security forces turned their guns on the Americans.
On Monday, the Taliban took responsibility for a suicide bombing outside Bagram that killed two people, saying it was revenge for the Quran burnings.
In other violence Monday, the Interior Ministry said one civilian was killed and 11 people wounded when a man blew himself up at a police checkpoint in Jalalabad in the east.
Karzai has been stubborn about his demands — apparently so much so that he is losing the backing of some of his own top aides.
An Afghan government official, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss the sensitive negotiations, said that more than two months ago National Security Adviser Rangin Dadfar Spanta submitted his resignation after disagreements erupted between him and Karzai over the strategic partnership document.
Spanta, who is heading the talks, wants Karzai to compromise on night raids and detentions.
Karzai did not accept Spanta's resignation, but kept the letter.
Spanta was on a trip to China and not available to comment, but Moradian said the resignation threat was part of an effort to pressure Karzai into a compromise.
"There is a possibility that if that tactic didn't work he would resign," said Moradian, assistant professor of political science at American University in Kabul.
Moradian, who was the chief policy adviser to Spanta when he was foreign minister, said he thinks Washington is considering waiting to negotiate the deal with Karzai's successor. Karzai is set to leave office after his second term ends in 2014.
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Showing posts with label Hamid Karzai. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Hamid Karzai. Show all posts
Saturday, April 7, 2012
Saturday, March 17, 2012
Anatomy of war plan collapse: Karzai-Obama rift
Gulf Widens Between U.S. and a More Volatile Karzai
By ROD NORDLAND, ALISSA J. RUBIN and MATTHEW ROSENBERG
Published: March 17, 2012
The New York Times
KABUL, Afghanistan — The Americans in Afghanistan are “demons.”
They claim they burned Korans by mistake, but really those were “Satanic acts that will never be forgiven by apologies.”
The massacre of 16 Afghan children, women and men by an American soldier “was not the first incident, indeed it was the 100th, the 200th and 500th incident.”
Such harsh talk may sound as if it comes from the Taliban, but those are all remarks either made personally by the United States’ increasingly hostile ally here, President Hamid Karzai, or issued by his office in recent days and weeks.
The strongest such outburst came Friday. “Let’s pray for God to rescue us from these two demons,” Mr. Karzai said, apparently holding back tears at a meeting with relatives of the massacre victims, and clearly referring to the United States and the Taliban in the same breath. “There are two demons in our country now.”
Ever since the Koran-burning episode on Feb. 20 and its violent aftermath, the relationship between the two governments has lurched from one crisis to another. American officials have scrambled to run damage control, with President Obama expressing a personal apology for the Koran burning, as well as regrets about the massacre, while calling Mr. Karzai twice in the past week.
The White House went to lengths last week to depict Mr. Karzai’s call for Americans to hand over control a year earlier, by 2013, as no change in policy — only to have Mr. Karzai pointedly insist the next day that it was. The Americans fret that Mr. Karzai is making a difficult job almost impossible, with demands they often see as unreasonable; Mr. Karzai worries that the Americans seek to undermine him, and may yet abandon his country and him, once again, to their fate.
The Koran burnings brought these differences into sharp relief, and led to a rupture in trust some view as irreparable. After an American unit at Bagram Air Base inadvertently burned Korans, embassy officials were deeply worried about an investigation conducted by the country’s Ulema Council, its highest religious body.
The council’s pronouncements, however, are closely controlled by Mr. Karzai’s office — they are even issued by the presidential palace — and American officials were assured by senior members on the president’s staff that the council’s report would be tough but not incendiary.
“We were ready to get knocked a bit,” said an American official who asked not to be identified to preserve his relationship with Afghan officials. “We messed up pretty badly.”
The original draft, in fact, was relatively moderate, American and Afghan officials said. But at the last minute more hard-line elements of Mr. Karzai’s staff weighed in, and the joint statement finally issued by the Ulema Council and the palace used language like “Satanic act” and “unforgivable, wild and inhuman” about the book burnings, and “justifiable emotion” in regard to the violent reaction, which claimed the lives of at least 29 Afghans and 6 Americans.
Western diplomats have often viewed Mr. Karzai’s outbursts as playing to the galleries, meant for consumption by his own people only, not as serious statements of policy. But the galleries also include the public in the United States and its NATO allies, where majorities in nearly every country oppose remaining in Afghanistan, and every new contretemps risks further eroding an already tenuous support.
“I think this is very serious because Mr. Karzai has always had a very ambivalent attitude toward the West and toward the war — he has never really believed violence is the answer,” said Sir Sherard Cowper-Coles, the British ambassador to Afghanistan from 2007 through 2009. “He is also very conscious and very resentful that his political survival and even perhaps his personal safety depend on the Americans.”
The current American ambassador, the veteran diplomat Ryan C. Crocker, was brought out of semiretirement by President Obama last July at least in part because he had known Mr. Karzai since the beginning: Mr. Crocker was the first envoy to Afghanistan after the invasion that defeated the Taliban, when Mr. Karzai was appointed interim leader here.
Like many of his predecessors, Mr. Crocker began his latest tour on an optimistic note. “President Karzai has the toughest job in the world, and he has been doing it for the last 10 years,” Mr. Crocker said early on, and has repeated often since. “You have to give him credit.”
[...]
By ROD NORDLAND, ALISSA J. RUBIN and MATTHEW ROSENBERG
Published: March 17, 2012
The New York Times
KABUL, Afghanistan — The Americans in Afghanistan are “demons.”
They claim they burned Korans by mistake, but really those were “Satanic acts that will never be forgiven by apologies.”
The massacre of 16 Afghan children, women and men by an American soldier “was not the first incident, indeed it was the 100th, the 200th and 500th incident.”
Such harsh talk may sound as if it comes from the Taliban, but those are all remarks either made personally by the United States’ increasingly hostile ally here, President Hamid Karzai, or issued by his office in recent days and weeks.
The strongest such outburst came Friday. “Let’s pray for God to rescue us from these two demons,” Mr. Karzai said, apparently holding back tears at a meeting with relatives of the massacre victims, and clearly referring to the United States and the Taliban in the same breath. “There are two demons in our country now.”
Ever since the Koran-burning episode on Feb. 20 and its violent aftermath, the relationship between the two governments has lurched from one crisis to another. American officials have scrambled to run damage control, with President Obama expressing a personal apology for the Koran burning, as well as regrets about the massacre, while calling Mr. Karzai twice in the past week.
The White House went to lengths last week to depict Mr. Karzai’s call for Americans to hand over control a year earlier, by 2013, as no change in policy — only to have Mr. Karzai pointedly insist the next day that it was. The Americans fret that Mr. Karzai is making a difficult job almost impossible, with demands they often see as unreasonable; Mr. Karzai worries that the Americans seek to undermine him, and may yet abandon his country and him, once again, to their fate.
The Koran burnings brought these differences into sharp relief, and led to a rupture in trust some view as irreparable. After an American unit at Bagram Air Base inadvertently burned Korans, embassy officials were deeply worried about an investigation conducted by the country’s Ulema Council, its highest religious body.
The council’s pronouncements, however, are closely controlled by Mr. Karzai’s office — they are even issued by the presidential palace — and American officials were assured by senior members on the president’s staff that the council’s report would be tough but not incendiary.
“We were ready to get knocked a bit,” said an American official who asked not to be identified to preserve his relationship with Afghan officials. “We messed up pretty badly.”
The original draft, in fact, was relatively moderate, American and Afghan officials said. But at the last minute more hard-line elements of Mr. Karzai’s staff weighed in, and the joint statement finally issued by the Ulema Council and the palace used language like “Satanic act” and “unforgivable, wild and inhuman” about the book burnings, and “justifiable emotion” in regard to the violent reaction, which claimed the lives of at least 29 Afghans and 6 Americans.
Western diplomats have often viewed Mr. Karzai’s outbursts as playing to the galleries, meant for consumption by his own people only, not as serious statements of policy. But the galleries also include the public in the United States and its NATO allies, where majorities in nearly every country oppose remaining in Afghanistan, and every new contretemps risks further eroding an already tenuous support.
“I think this is very serious because Mr. Karzai has always had a very ambivalent attitude toward the West and toward the war — he has never really believed violence is the answer,” said Sir Sherard Cowper-Coles, the British ambassador to Afghanistan from 2007 through 2009. “He is also very conscious and very resentful that his political survival and even perhaps his personal safety depend on the Americans.”
The current American ambassador, the veteran diplomat Ryan C. Crocker, was brought out of semiretirement by President Obama last July at least in part because he had known Mr. Karzai since the beginning: Mr. Crocker was the first envoy to Afghanistan after the invasion that defeated the Taliban, when Mr. Karzai was appointed interim leader here.
Like many of his predecessors, Mr. Crocker began his latest tour on an optimistic note. “President Karzai has the toughest job in the world, and he has been doing it for the last 10 years,” Mr. Crocker said early on, and has repeated often since. “You have to give him credit.”
[...]
Friday, February 17, 2012
In Islamabad "Angry Karzai confronts Pakistan's leaders over Taliban"
Angry Karzai confronts Pakistan's leaders over Taliban
By Saeed Shah
McClatchy Newspapers [via Miami Herald]
February 17, 2012
ISLAMABAD — An angry Afghan President Hamid Karzai confronted the Pakistani leadership Thursday, demanding that it produce Taliban officials for peace talks and underscoring the distrust between Kabul and Islamabad, which stands in the way of a deal to end the decade-long Afghan conflict.
As Karzai's frustration with Pakistan, which he accuses of harboring the Taliban, boiled over, the mercurial Afghan leader's language and tone flared to such an extent that the Pakistani prime minister halted a key meeting of the full delegations of the two countries, according to officials on both sides, who spoke only on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue.
After a break, top officials reconvened for a smaller meeting, including Karzai, a rocky start to his two-day visit to Islamabad.
The nascent Afghan peace talks depend on the neighbors being able to cooperate, but Karzai has long demanded that Pakistan bring the leadership of the Taliban to the negotiating table, including their chief, Mullah Mohammad Omar.
According to one official who was privy to the discussions Thursday, Karzai bluntly demanded that Pakistan produce Taliban leaders to negotiate with him during his visit, an aggressive stance that shocked the Pakistani side.
The Afghan side's main meeting, which went on for around three hours, was with the combined Pakistani civilian and military leadership. The Pakistani prime minister, foreign minister, army chief and head of the military's Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate spy agency were present.
At one point, apparently directing his remarks to Pakistan's foreign minister, Hina Rabbani Khar, Karzai asked: "Would you be willing to stop girls studying in schools and university in Pakistan?"
The Taliban, who ruled Afghanistan in the 1990s, imposed an extremist interpretation of Islam, stopping girls' education and banning women from working. Kabul and its Western allies believe that Mullah Omar and other Taliban leaders have an officially sanctioned haven in Pakistan, giving Islamabad decisive leverage over any negotiations.
Islamabad has denied those charges, and Khar, speaking to a small group of reporters after the meetings, called the accusations "ridiculous."
"We don't have Mullah Omar to bring," Khar said. "That's the crazy perception about Pakistan."
She described the discussions with the Afghan delegation as "hard" and "serious," declining to go into details. Pakistan has said it will back Kabul's peace efforts but has never spelled out what it's capable of delivering. Conversely, Pakistan says that it's unclear what Karzai is demanding of it.
By Saeed Shah
McClatchy Newspapers [via Miami Herald]
February 17, 2012
ISLAMABAD — An angry Afghan President Hamid Karzai confronted the Pakistani leadership Thursday, demanding that it produce Taliban officials for peace talks and underscoring the distrust between Kabul and Islamabad, which stands in the way of a deal to end the decade-long Afghan conflict.
As Karzai's frustration with Pakistan, which he accuses of harboring the Taliban, boiled over, the mercurial Afghan leader's language and tone flared to such an extent that the Pakistani prime minister halted a key meeting of the full delegations of the two countries, according to officials on both sides, who spoke only on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue.
After a break, top officials reconvened for a smaller meeting, including Karzai, a rocky start to his two-day visit to Islamabad.
The nascent Afghan peace talks depend on the neighbors being able to cooperate, but Karzai has long demanded that Pakistan bring the leadership of the Taliban to the negotiating table, including their chief, Mullah Mohammad Omar.
According to one official who was privy to the discussions Thursday, Karzai bluntly demanded that Pakistan produce Taliban leaders to negotiate with him during his visit, an aggressive stance that shocked the Pakistani side.
The Afghan side's main meeting, which went on for around three hours, was with the combined Pakistani civilian and military leadership. The Pakistani prime minister, foreign minister, army chief and head of the military's Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate spy agency were present.
At one point, apparently directing his remarks to Pakistan's foreign minister, Hina Rabbani Khar, Karzai asked: "Would you be willing to stop girls studying in schools and university in Pakistan?"
The Taliban, who ruled Afghanistan in the 1990s, imposed an extremist interpretation of Islam, stopping girls' education and banning women from working. Kabul and its Western allies believe that Mullah Omar and other Taliban leaders have an officially sanctioned haven in Pakistan, giving Islamabad decisive leverage over any negotiations.
Islamabad has denied those charges, and Khar, speaking to a small group of reporters after the meetings, called the accusations "ridiculous."
"We don't have Mullah Omar to bring," Khar said. "That's the crazy perception about Pakistan."
She described the discussions with the Afghan delegation as "hard" and "serious," declining to go into details. Pakistan has said it will back Kabul's peace efforts but has never spelled out what it's capable of delivering. Conversely, Pakistan says that it's unclear what Karzai is demanding of it.
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