Afghanistan and US agree on long-awaited bilateral deal

Afghanistan and the US have finally agreed on a strategic deal defining their relationship after the withdrawal in 2014. Subject to parliamentary and Senate approval, the deal will be valid for ten years. The agreement tackles the issues of Afghan sovereignty such as control of prisons and night raids, whilst continuing to support governance, education and civil society. The US will have no military bases present in Afghanistan but this may change when a separate military agreement will be looked at a year after the strategic agreement comes in to force. The US will provide training to the security forces for a decade after the withdrawal. A similar strategic pact is likely to be agreed with Germany and Australia as well.

The bilateral agreement did concur that the US will not use Afghanistan to launch attacks on other countries, but will give support by economical, political and even military means should ‘any kind of interference in Afghan affairs’ occur.

The issue of aid was also discussed. World Bank has estimated that Afghanistan will face a $7bn hole in its annual budget after 2014. While the US and the international community has so far pledged $4bn a year in aid to Afghanistan, this has not been formally agreed and was indeed not part of the deal here. Karzai was reported as stating that he would much rather this pledge was as low as $2bn annually, but agreed in writing.

As part of the deal, the US is looking towards Muslim countries, including Pakistan, to contribute annually to the ‘Afghanistan Security Fund’ after 2014. The US clearly wants to spread its financial burden by getting the international community to assist in the security fund. The emphasis on Muslim countries is to appeal to Afghans, and potentially the Taliban.

For Pakistan, this poses a potential problem. Extremist groups within the country have been galvanised by Pakistan’s backing for the US in the ‘war on terror’, resulting in a worsening of their domestic security situation. Thousands have been killed in suicide attacks and the security forces’ fight in the lawless northwest region of Pakistan. Coupled with the mass public outcry at US drone attacks, the Pakistan government has a potential hot potato on their hands in the shape of this security fund. On the one hand, the fund will represent a good, open opportunity for Pakistan to influence matters in Afghanistan through legitimate means, while on the other hand there may be strong public resistance to the idea.

As noted, what is interesting is that the deal stipulates the use of force by the US, on agreement with the Afghan government, should there be any kind of ‘interference’ in the country. Given the clear threat coming from within Pakistan’s Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, and the porous border along the two neighbours, the likelihood of further US involvement after the withdrawal seems inevitable.

Meanwhile, the US administration distanced itself from a Congressional Delegation (CODEF) that met with the National Front last week. The delegation, led by Texan Republican Senator Louie Gohmert, demanded that the return of the Taliban should not be accepted and forcibly stated that the corruption that mires the country was due to the current ‘presidential regime’. The congressional delegation argued that a ‘rapid change’ to a parliamentary regime was needed to hold the Afghan government more accountable and provide a better alternative.

The US will be careful not to upset the apple cart since they endorsed the current presidential system in Afghanistan. It has gone to huge pains to convince Afghans that such a system can work. Such a delegation will raise further questions on the how Karzai’s government is viewed within the US and how the bilateral deal brokered last week will pan out after the withdrawal in 2014.

It is worth looking at this proposal, but also worth noting from the outset that such a shift is hugely unlikely to occur. Neither the US nor the current government will back such efforts, and if the Taliban have a legitimate political voice in the system they are also likely to oppose. The system allows Karzai to remain separate from the legislative branch of the government, to which he remains unanswerable to. He is also protected against the ‘vote of no confidence’ usually present in parliamentary systems. Although the presidential system was crucial to stabilise the country, it now arguably causes the corruption rife in the country. The separation of the executive and legislature branch in the government weakens the accountability to legislature.

The traditional Afghan political set up has much space for monarchs, tribal leaders and warlords, but little for participatory local governments. A presidential system allows Karzai to act as the national tribal leader, representative of the many ethnic groups present in the country. A centralisation of power under an executive president with wide reaching powers potentially creates a lack of accountability and inclusion of the minority political groups. Remember that the minorities were against the current presidential system enshrined in the Bonn agreement of 2001.

The strategic deal represents the initial steps towards a view of an Afghanistan post-2014. The international community will want to keep a close eye on and influence the troubled region, through economic and political means. Billions more will be pumped into the country to support institutions; the same institutions mired in weakness and corruption. Weary of a costly war spanning over a decade the international community will look on with anxious gazes, hopeful that the current system holds firm against further interference.

Pakistan and US to resume talks on NATO supply route

The US is to discuss with Pakistan the reopening of NATO supply route to Afghanistan. News outlets in Kabul and Islamabad reported that, Deputy Secretary of State, Thomas Nides travelled to Pakistan on 4 April to resume the talks which started on 27 March between President Obama and Prime Minister Gillani at the Nuclear Security Summit in Seoul.

However, the new agreement proposed by the US is likely to face resistance in the Pakistan Parliament.  According to the National Highway Authority (NHA), Nato containers use the N-5 National Highway from Karachi to Torkham and N-25 from Karachi to Chaman, when supplying goods to forces stationed in Afghanistan. NHA estimates put the damage caused to the country’s infrastructure by Nato trucks at close to Rs120 billion. The US has agreed to Pakistani demands of higher compensation and transport taxes on the supply routes but elements within the Parliament are opposed to the American’s refusal to cede drone attacks in the Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa, especially given the public opposition to US drone attacks.

Several American officials have stated that the Obama administration will show ‘zero tolerance’ on their drone policy. But the administration has upped the diplomatic efforts in praising the Pakistan Parliament in the hope that the new agreement is voted through.

The reopening of the supply route has already been met with strong opposition. At the Parliamentary Committee on National Security meeting on Thursday 5 April, the chief of the Jamiat Ulema-Islam-Fazl (JUI-F) stormed out stating that the religious right of Pakistan would spuriously resist it. Another council composed of religious hardline Islamist groups, the Difa-e-Pakistan Council, said they would protest against the reopening. The talks come at a time when the US has slapped a bounty of $10m on Hafiz Mohammed Saeed, the founder of Lashkar-e-Taiba, on accusations of masterminding the 2008 Mumbai bombings in which 166 people were killed. The religious right of Pakistan see the bounty and the efforts to reopen the supply route to Afghanistan as further breach of their sovereignty by the US.

The supply route was closed following furious backlash to US drone attacks in November last year which killed 26 Pakistani soldiers along the Afghan border.

The withdrawal of the public conscience.

The relationship between NATO and Afghanistan hit rock bottom yesterday with the news that a lone US serviceman had killed 16 villagers, 11 of them children. After a difficult few months, where Afghan anger reached a peak after the burning of Korans by US soldiers, this tragedy is another blow to the fragile situation. The agreement to gradually hand over the Parwan detention facility to Afghan control is a positive step, but the plans that are reportedly in the works to end the "lead combat role" in the country show a worrying policy of desertion being increasingly favoured by NATO. After Nicolas Sarkozy's insistance that French soldiers would be withdrawn if the security situation did not improve, and rising numbers of comment articles advocating the withdrawal of NATO troops, it seems as if we are already beginning think about the War in Afghanistan in the perfect tense. As the country reaches its most difficult hour, when foreign troops leave a poorly trained national army to keep the peace in a deeply divided and fragmented country, it would be criminal of the global community to erase the Afghan people from our collective consciousness and neglect our obligation to help once we have left in a military capacity. It is of vital importance to keep the Afghan people in our thoughts and not excuse our conduct of the last decade as part of an ill-fated jaunt in South Asia. The citizens of Afghanistan have been abused for decades. Lest we forget that we have been intimately involved.

Afghanistan at boiling point

Sixteen Afghan civilians, nine of them children, were killed by a rogue US Army soldier in the early hours of Sunday morning. The soldier, stationed at a base in Panjwai, Kandahar province, acted alone in what many speculate was a pre-meditated attack. Eye-witness accounts are confused and contradictory but suggest a helicopter was present in the area, perhaps sent out to apprehend the rogue soldier. The soldier has not been named but the AP news agency quoted officials saying that he is 38, married with at least two children. He had served three tours of duty in Iraq - being deployed to Afghanistan for the first time in December - and has served in the army for 11 years. It is believed he may have suffered a nervous breakdown.

This is not the first time soldiers have intentionally killed civilians. In 2010, four soldiers killed three unarmed men in Maiwand district. But the timing of these killings are significant. Afghans are still reeling from the accidental burning of Qurans in late February which led to widespread riots which left over 30 people dead, including two U.S. military officers killed Saturday in a heavily guarded Afghan government ministry. This came shortly after a video leaked showing US Marines urinating on the corpses of men they had killed. The Taliban have threatened a violent retaliation to the killings which has reignited anti-American sentiment and further undermined the delicate American battle for Afghan hearts and minds.

The great irony in Afghanistan is that the efforts American generals and senior government officials to gain local support for the Western military presence has been undermined not by the large number killings of civilians which have come as the result of intentional drone strikes or other forms of military engagement. Rather it is a few random, unpredictable scandals for which the US is not at fault that have led to a break down in Afghan-American relations.  

Obama has interpreted the growing frequency of such scandals as an indication that it is time to withdraw, but perhaps it is the withdrawal itself which has strained relations. The announced withdrawal has changed the mind set of both Afghans and Americans. The top command insist that America continues to have a long term interest in a stable and prosperous Afghanistan but it is hard to communicate these sentiments down through the chain of command to the soldiers on the ground. Ordinary troops no longer feel the US has a great stake in the future of Afghanistan and even fear they have lost the support of the American people. Similarly, ordinary Afghans are preparing for the near future when western troops will be gone which means revaluating their alliances and where they invest their support.

Over the next few days, Afghanistan will be on a knife edge. Some bases have doubled the number of soldiers on watch duty while others have begun guarding their barracks as well. Initial reports suggest protests have not reached the levels seen last week after the accidental burning of Qurans but regardless of whether Afghans choose to take to the streets, their faith in the American presence is waning. 

In the UK Parliament

There was an Afghan forum last Thursday in the House of Commons organised by Khalid Nadeem of the SOUTH ASIA & MIDDLE EAST FORUM. Hamad Ghailani, head of the Hadra sufi sect, was a speaker. His comments were fairly tame and largely supportive of Karzai. He claimed that the West had been wrong to make 2014 a date for troop withdrawal and that the National Dialogue (in which the major players are the Taliban and the Northern Alliance) was of some importance.
Tobias Elwood MP spoke rather better, talking of the importance of infrastructure. For instance the tarmac road to Lashkagar has made people in that region more prosperous to such a degree that the locals report I.E.D.s more readily. He views Herat and Kandahar as economic hubs. He says that economic development might make the difference - if Afghanistan had more credible politics. But to this day Afghanistan has no proper political parties and way too much power for the President. Tobias favours the Single Transferable Vote system rather than the current first past the post system for Afghanistan. But he laments the state of the Afghan armed forces with an army that is largely Tajik and Uzbek and a police force that is largely Pushtu.
We were reminded that the West currently has 130,000 troops in Afghanistan and intends to leave 20,000 behind after 2014.
Sabrina, an Afghan MP, reminded us of the importance of UN resolution 1325 (see below).
We were reminded that the USA does not want to stay in Afghanistan. Another questioner emphasised the importance of dealing with the warlords if you want to control drugs because they are the ones forcing the farmers to produce them,
The NCF suggested that the proxy war between India and Pakistan in Afghanistan had to end - and that meant resolving the Kashmir issue.

ON UNSCR 1325: PeaceWomen.org writes: The first resolution on women, peace and security, Security Council Resolution 1325 (SCR1325), was unanimously adopted by United Nations Security Council on 31 October 2000. SCR1325 marked the first time the Security Council addressed the disproportionate and unique impact of armed conflict on women; recognized the under-valued and under-utilized contributions women make to conflict prevention, peacekeeping, conflict resolution and peace-building. It also stressed the importance of women’s equal and full participation as active agents in peace and security. SCR1325 is binding upon all UN Member States and the adoption of the Resolution marked an important international political recognition that women and gender are relevant to international peace and security.

Parwan raises questions over Afghan sovereignty

The disagreement over the role that the United States will play within Afghanistan after their scheduled withdrawal in 2014 has become more pronounced recently, with some observers suggesting that advisors with ‘anti-western’ agendas are becoming more influential within the Hamid Karzai’s close circle.  A New York Times article published yesterday describes how the Parwan detention facility has become the latest focal point in the escalating war of words between the Afghan government and the United States. The issue revolves around the ‘sudden’ demand for the full transfer of the prison from US control to Afghanistan. This is despite the Americans’ claims that a programme specialising in the training of Afghan prison officers is behind schedule and that there is definite timetable for the handing-over of the prison.

The escalating tension over the future of Parwan can be seen as a metaphor for the issue of sovereignty in a post-US Afghanistan. Obama’s administration has been accused of interfering with sovereignty before, most notably by Pakistan, and it is now the turn of the Afghan government to blame the United States of sidestepping the correct diplomatic channels and making unilateral decisions about the country’s future. Allegations of torture at the base are being used as the primary reason for requesting it to be transferred to Afghan control, but the whole case is also being used as a political exercise by Karzai to show the US that he and his government are willing to go public if they feel that private negotiations are leading nowhere.

With a timetable for withdrawal finalised, the question of what the USA’s involvement in Afghanistan will be after 2014 needs to be answered. The ‘strategic partnership document’ that will be published at some point this year will go some way in describing how the United States will maintain a presence in the country that it has been in seemingly forever. How this document will be received by Karzai’s government, however, remains to be seen, and it will be of utmost importance to the Afghan administration that national sovereignty is not threatened.

A Kabul visit!

Sadly our friends are leaving Afghanistan and I think that things seem to be getting worse.
We thought that these friends had been caught in the suicide bomb that had killed a number of people europeons along with Afghans but luckily they weren't! There are more and more attacks even Kabul doesn't appear to be safe. Last time I wrote it was 194 casualities, but to date it's 383 British service men and women.
God bless Akghanistan and all the brave men and women that live there.