US has been asking karzai to sign a deal for allowing some NATO troops to remain in Afghanistan post 2014, but the president has been dilly dallying. If he really does not trust the Americans the solution is simple, he can bluntly ask them to withdraw all their forces in 2014.
tribune.com.pk/story/645483/afghan-president-says-does-not-trust-us/
Re: Karzai does not trust the US
13 years of war in Afghanistan (at the cost of trillions of dollars and countless lives) they have an angry ally in Afghanistan, skeptical Pakistan not to say anything about their 'foe' taleban. So what exactly has the US achieved in this war on terror?
Re: Karzai does not trust the US
they got Pakistan in their noose? 
Re: Karzai does not trust the US
Afghanistan is 100% dependent on foreign aid but they have been putting up some pressure on them for a while. On the other hand it seems as if Pakistan has lost its voice infront of the Americans. Afghanistan versus a nuclear power having the sixth biggest army in the world.
Re: Karzai does not trust the US
Afghanistan is 100% dependent on foreign aid but they have been putting up some pressure on them for a while. On the other hand it seems as if Pakistan has lost its voice infront of the Americans. Afghanistan versus a nuclear power having the sixth biggest army in the world.
it's true from what we can see and tell but the weakness is due to the civilian government and military brass' inability to stand up against Uncle Sam. the day they do, awaam will be behind them and then US and it's allies will think twice to tease a nuclear power. but, before that, Pakistani government has to be economically self sufficient. they have to tackle the energy crisis head on.
**
did you hear that Iran has canceled the Gas Pipeline Project citing it's inability, due to financial hardships, to finance Pakistani side of the construction. is that really so?
also, Iran has walked of the nuclear-talk because the US wants to leave certain important sanctions in place.**
are the above two news items somehow linked?
Re: Karzai does not trust the US
^ Iran is a powerful and proud country as compared to Afghanistan. But if we see the past one year, afghans have foiled US efforts to reach a deal with the taleban. They are trying to respond to Pakistan in the same coin that they think we have been treating them. Thirdly karzai has taken a very strong exception to US bombing on his population. On the other hand Pakistans response to drone strikes has been muted. Remember Pakistan receives a small fraction of aid that Afghanistan receives.
Re: Karzai does not trust the US
US has been asking karzai to sign a deal for allowing some NATO troops to remain in Afghanistan post 2014, but the president has been dilly dallying. If he really does not trust the Americans the solution is simple, he can bluntly ask them to withdraw all their forces in 2014.
tribune.com.pk/story/645483/afghan-president-says-does-not-trust-us/
US does not need karJai or any of his cronies to stay in A-Stan, US can and will stay in Vietnamistan until they realize that they cannot win and tuck their tail.
Re: Karzai does not trust the US
He knows if the Americans withdraw his time will be up.
Re: Karzai does not trust the US
After discussions, negotiations, tantrums and deadlocks, Afghanistan’s President Hamid Karzai – backed by tribal leaders who had assembled in Kabul in a Loya Jirga – approved a Bilateral Security Agreement (BSA) that will allow around 15,000 US troops to remain in Afghanistan until 2024.
“From this moment on, America’s searching of houses, blocking of roads and streets, and military operations are over, and our people are free in their country,” Karzai said. “If the US military forces conduct military operations on Afghan homes even one more time, then there will be no BSA, and we won’t sign it.”
Despite pressure from the White House, threatening to stop a $4 billion aid for the Afghan army, and a decision by the Loya Jirga, Hamid Karzai delayed the signing of the deal, saying the matter should be resolved after the presidential elections in 2014. Adamant that the security pact be signed this year, the White House sent out its National Security Adviser Susan Rice to Kabul. It did not work. “Ambassador Rice reiterated,” according to a statement, “that without a prompt signature, the US would have no choice but to initiate planning for a post-2014 future in which there would be no US or NATO troop presence in Afghanistan.”
Karzai’s brinkmanship:
Analysts in Afghanistan call Karzai’s sudden decision to delay the signing a “political bluff”. Karzai is not qualified to contest for a third term, but he will back his own candidate.
“The signing is being delayed for Karzai, and not for the interest of Afghanistan,” his political rival Abdullah Abdullah said. Karzai’s spokesman denies the allegation. “The president respects Loya Jirga’s decision, but he has some pre-conditions that are in the interest of our people. We also think there will be no zero-sum option and the US will stay in Afghanistan after 2014.”
“Our deployment and role will be similar to the one we have in Iraq,” said a top NATO commander based in Afghanistan. “To assist and facilitate the Afghan government, keep Al Qaeda in holes, and probably fight the Afghan Taliban until the talks succeed.”
The agreement:
BSA is a strategic agreement that ensures long-term interests of both the United States and Afghanistan. The Loya Jirga, which consists of 2,500 tribal elders from all parts of Afghanistan, had particularly been assertive about three conditions: that the US will ensure Afghanistan security from its neighbors (especially Pakistan), long-term financial support for the Afghan economy, and additional US bases in vulnerable minority areas.
‘We will continue to fight’:
In Islamabad, Afghan Taliban condemned the Kabul-Washington agreement. According to a source close to the Quetta Shura “the Afghan Talibs see the BSA as an extension of the war against them”. They said they had only been talking to the Afghan government to ensure the US and NATO troops are compelled to leave Afghanistan. “The BSA means we will continue to fight,” they said.
“As we have stated earlier, the forum of tribal elders in Kabul has been arranged to safeguard American objectives,” said a statement issued by Afghan Taliban commander Zabihullah Mujahid. “All the attendees were government officials, who lacked the freedom to make their own decisions.”
Implications for Pakistan:
The Loya Jirga was very critical of Pakistan’s role in Afghanistan. Islamabad has been working hard to bring the Afghan Taliban and the government in Kabul on the negotiation table. “Anybody who is sent by the (Afghan) president to Pakistan to talk to Mullah Baradar… we will make sure that such meetings would take place,” Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif said during his recent visit to Kabul. “We are watching the developments in Afghanistan with great interest,” a senior security official said. “Pakistan cannot afford a sudden withdrawal of US troops from Afghanistan.”
Re: Karzai does not trust the US
US does not need karJai or any of his cronies to stay in A-Stan, US can and will stay in Vietnamistan until they realize that they cannot win and tuck their tail.
Its hardly like Vietnam is it? How many American soldiers have died in the ten years of fighting, not many I think especially when compared to the death toll of Afghan civilians.
Re: Karzai does not trust the US
karzai is merely trying to get to the role of kingmaker in afghanistan.
Re: Karzai does not trust the US
Its hardly like Vietnam is it? How many American soldiers have died in the ten years of fighting, not many I think especially when compared to the death toll of Afghan civilians.
Number of casualties is hardly the yard stick, otherwise Shri Hitler won hands down and so did the yanks in Nam and NoKo.
Re: Karzai does not trust the US
It is an indicator though. How would you measure the success of the Americans? The fact that they have significantly disrupted Al Qaeda but have also spent billions of dollars doing it?
Re: Karzai does not trust the US
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Re: Karzai does not trust the US
Number of casualties is hardly the yard stick, otherwise Shri Hitler won hands down and so did the yanks in Nam and NoKo.
Hitler lost a whole generation so much so that it was the old and the very young who were drafted in the battle of berlin in 1945. Let us not go overboard here.
If NoKo is north korea then the US stopped them from over running the south and their ally now is 100 times the economy of the north.
Re: Karzai does not trust the US
Hitler lost a whole generation so much so that it was the old and the very young who were drafted in the battle of berlin in 1945. Let us not go overboard here.
If NoKo is north korea then the US stopped them from over running the south and their ally now is 100 times the economy of the north.
You repeat the same old flute SoKo 100, 1000, 100000 times blah blah which is irrelevant... At the time of war it was US that was driven all the way from China back to the 38th exactly where China wanted US to be, I won't even touch Nam at this point.... As for WWI/II casualties I suggest you take a crash course but than again it will be irrelevant to the discussions at hand..
Wars are not won by killings/casualties but "objectives met" And US has met its objectives quite well all the way to A-Stan.
Re: Karzai does not trust the US
It is an indicator though. **How would you measure the success of the Americans? **The fact that they have significantly disrupted Al Qaeda but have also spent billions of dollars doing it?
Same way like we do for the wars of Korea and Nam and now Vietnamistan. SIMPLE....
Re: Karzai does not trust the US
Karzai has become an expert at sticking his finger in the eye of the United States – the same nation that has expended significant blood and treasure to keep him in power. Some examples include: once calling the Taliban insurgents ravaging his country “brothers”, publicly accusing the United States of working with the Taliban to stage bombing attacks, or declaring that if a war broke between the US and Pakistan, he would side with Pakistan.
But Karzai’s latest gaffe is perhaps his worst and most potentially damaging: namely his continued refusal to sign a bilateral security agreement (BSA) with that United States that will keep American troops in the country for the next 10 years. While this latest action is easy to chalk up as another example of Karzai’s propensity for irrational, eccentric and brinkmanship-like behavior, there is a deeper backstory here. This blow-up du jour is not some outlier in the US-Afghan relationship, it’s the culmination of years upon years of a poorly conceived US political and military strategy in Afghanistan that has treated Karzai and the Afghan people as a sideshow and collateral damage in the US global war against al-Qaida.
So while Karzai might be a pain – he’s got a point.
Of course, the question of who is to blame doesn’t change the fact that Karzai’s current recalcitrance could have potentially disastrous consequences for the country he leads. Failure to affix his signature to the BSA could lead the US to pursue a so-called “zero option” and bring all of its troops home from Afghanistan. This would have a destabilizing cascade effect. First, the likely departure of all NATO troops; and potential cut off of billions in financial assistance from the United States. Considering that the budget of the Afghan security forces is larger than the revenues brought in by the Afghan government, that could be a serious problem and one that could lead to more instability and an even bloodier civil war than we’ve seen over the past several years. It is small wonder that one of the few political groups in Afghanistan to endorse Karzai’s move is the Taliban.
Why is Karzai playing such a dangerous game of chicken? First, he knows that once he signs the BSA, he will lose all leverage with the United States, particularly in regard to the April presidential election that will choose his successor. Moreover, he appears to truly believe that the US would never actually withdraw all its troops from Afghanistan (no matter how many times US officials say it). But above all, Karzai simply doesn’t appear to trust the United States.
None of this puts Karzai in a positive light, and his recent actions are impossible to defend. But the fight over the BSA is symptomatic of the way in which US policy in Afghanistan has gone far off the rails. Back in 2008 when Obama was running for president, he pledged to focus his energy on the war in Afghanistan, but he did little to prioritize his relationship with Karzai.
But the real trouble started with the decision to embrace the military’s star-crossed dreams of population-centric counter-insurgency (COIN). As former US Ambassador to Afghanistan Karl Eikenberry noted in a devastating recent article in Foreign Affairs magazine:
Karzai disagreed intellectually, politically, and viscerally with the key pillars of the COIN campaign. The result was that while American military commanders tirelessly worked to persuade the Afghan president through factual presentation, deference, and occasional humor that the plan was working, they never seemed to consider that Karzai just might not be on board.
As reliant as he was on US aid, Karzai was in little position to resist. But since the success of any COIN campaign is deeply dependent on aligning the strategy of a host nation with their foreign military supporter, the lack of buy-in from Karzai had a disastrous impact. Rather than act as a partner in the US effort, Karzai became a constant spoiler. As US officials tried to make Karzai into something he wasn’t – a competent, effective and popular leader – it led to more friction, which was further worsened by the increase in civilian casualties from the ramped up US war. While US officials are right to note that most of these deaths came at the hands of Taliban attacks, the cumulative effect of putting more US troops on the battlefield and stepping up operations meant that more Afghans were going to die.
Yet this has been the consistent failure of Obama’s Afghanistan policy. The United States identified a military strategy for Afghanistan (slow the momentum of the Taliban) and the tactical means of trying to accomplish it (COIN), but offered no serious political strategy to accompany it. Unable to get Karzai to do what they wanted, they worked around him or simply disregarded him. When the US finally did begin to tepidly advance a political agenda, Karzai once again played the spoiler – in part fearful that he was being excluded from decisions about the country’s future (and it must be said his own schizophrenic attitude toward political reconciliation with the Taliban).
The fact is, from day one there has been little thought given by this White House as to what would come after the Americans left. The result is continued military stalemate and little hope, in the near future, of a political settlement. Indeed, it seems tragically fitting that in the midst of this crisis, a US airstrike last week killed a child in southern Afghanistan – further symbolic evidence of the prioritization of military tactics to the disregard of Afghan politics.
This speaks to the long-standing divergence between Karzai’s interests and those of America’s. Ultimately, the US sees Afghanistan through the narrow prism of the war on terrorism – and eliminating a potential safe haven for future al-Qaida terrorists. **As Obama coldly noted in 2009, during the midst of his Afghan policy review, he wasn’t “interested in just being in Afghanistan for the sake of being in Afghanistan” but rather for how it advanced US national security interests.
This mindset placed the security of Americans over that of Afghans. To protect the former, the US was willing to put the latter in harm’s way.** At the same time, the administration consistently blanched at the potential domestic “political” blowback that would comes from jumpstarting a negotiating process with the Taliban, preferring instead to kick the military can down the road to 2014 and US troop withdrawal.
For Karzai, the brunt of the US war on terrorism was being borne by his people with little long-term payoff for Afghanistan. When he would say “Al Qaeda was driven out of Afghanistan in 2001. They have no base in Afghanistan. The war against terrorism is not in Afghan villages and is not in the Afghan countryside”, he was stating an unpleasant truth that was glossed over by US policymakers. From this perspective, that Karzai’s redline appears to be the entry of US troops into Afghan homes is hardly a coincidence.
In the end, Karzai will likely back down and sign the BSA. Unfortunately for the Afghan people, while the BSA – and the presence of US troops – may prevent immediately dire consequences, there is little reason for optimism that the country’s 30+ years of civil war will end any time soon. So while Hamid Karzai might be a mercurial and paranoid leader who has made a bad situation vis-à-vis the United States that much worse, America’s leaders would be wise to look at themselves in the mirror when casting blame. There’s plenty to go around.
Re: Karzai does not trust the US
13 years of war in Afghanistan (at the cost of trillions of dollars and countless lives) they have an angry ally in Afghanistan, skeptical Pakistan not to say anything about their 'foe' taleban. So what exactly has the US achieved in this war on terror?
Destabilized Pakistan and Afghanistan which has potential to sneak in China and India. If the puppets installed in Afghanistan and Pakistan are as dumb as they thought things will never be in control and disease could spread out. US is not a neighbor by any stretch of mile.
Re: Karzai does not trust the US
Karzai ko iss maheenay tankhwa poori nahee mili.