The following article has created quite a stir in Washington (note especially the part at the end concerning elections):
THE NEW YORK TIMES
By Mark Mazzetti and Matthew Rosenberg
08 July
2013
WASHINGTON — Increasingly frustrated by his dealings with President
Hamid Karzai, President Obama is giving serious consideration to speeding up the
withdrawal of United States forces from Afghanistan and to a “zero option” that
would leave no American troops there after next year, according to American and
European officials.
Mr. Obama is committed to ending America’s military
involvement in Afghanistan by the end of 2014, and Obama administration
officials have been negotiating with Afghan officials about leaving a small
“residual force” behind. But his relationship with Mr. Karzai has been slowly
unraveling, and reached a new low after an effort last month by the United
States to begin peace talks with the Taliban in Qatar.
Mr. Karzai
promptly repudiated the talks and ended negotiations with the United States over
the long-term security deal that is needed to keep American forces in
Afghanistan after 2014.
A videoconference between Mr. Obama and Mr.
Karzai designed to defuse the tensions ended badly, according to both American
and Afghan officials with knowledge of it. Mr. Karzai, according to those
sources, accused the United States of trying to negotiate a separate peace with
both the Taliban and their backers in Pakistan, leaving Afghanistan’s fragile
government exposed to its enemies.
Mr. Karzai had made similar
accusations in the past. But those comments were delivered to Afghans — not to
Mr. Obama, who responded by pointing out the American lives that have been lost
propping up Mr. Karzai’s government, the officials said.
The option of
leaving no troops in Afghanistan after 2014 was gaining momentum before the June
27 video conference, according to the officials. But since then, the idea of a
complete military exit similar to the American military pullout from Iraq has
gone from being considered the worst-case scenario — and a useful negotiating
tool with Mr. Karzai — to an alternative under serious consideration in
Washington and Kabul.
The officials cautioned that no decisions had been
made on the pace of the pullout and exactly how many American troops to leave
behind in Afghanistan. The goal remains negotiating a long-term security deal,
they said, but the hardening of negotiating stances on both sides could result
in a repeat of what happened in Iraq, where a deal failed to materialize despite
widespread expectations that a compromise would be reached and American forces
would remain.
“There’s always been a zero option, but it was not seen as
the main option,” said a senior Western official in Kabul. “It is now becoming
one of them, and if you listen to some people in Washington, it is maybe now
being seen as a realistic path.”
The official, however, said he hoped
some in the Karzai government were beginning to understand that the zero option
was now a distinct possibility, and that they’re learning now, not later, when
it’s going to be too late.
The Obama administration’s internal
deliberations about the future of the Afghan war were described by officials in
Washington and Kabul who hold a range of views on how quickly the United States
should leave Afghanistan and how many troops it should leave behind.
Spokesmen for the White House and Pentagon declined to comment.Within
the Obama administration, the way the United States extricates itself from
Afghanistan has been a source of tension between civilian and military officials
since Mr. Obama took office.
American commanders in Afghanistan have
generally pushed to keep as many American troops in the country as long as
possible, creating friction with White House officials urging a speedier
military withdrawal.
But with frustrations mounting over the glacial pace
of initiating peace talks with the Taliban, and with American relations with the
Karzai government continuing to deteriorate, it is unclear whether the Pentagon
and American commanders in Afghanistan would vigorously resist if the White
House pushed for a full-scale pullout months ahead of schedule.
As it
stands, the number of American troops in Afghanistan — around 63,000 — is
scheduled to go down to 34,000 by February 2014. The White House has said the
vast majority of troops would be out of Afghanistan by the end of that year,
although it now appears that the schedule could accelerate to bring the bulk of
the troops — if not all of them — home by next summer, as the annual fighting
season winds down.
Talks between the United States and Afghanistan over a
long-term security deal have faltered in recent months over the Afghan
government’s insistence that the United States guarantee Afghanistan’s security
and, in essence, commit to declaring Pakistan the main obstacle in the fight
against militancy in the region.
The guarantees sought by Afghanistan, if
implemented, could possibly compel the United States to attack Taliban havens in
Pakistan long after 2014, when the Obama administration has said it hoped to
dial back the C.I.A.’s covert drone war there.
Mr. Karzai also wants the
Obama administration to specify the number of troops it would leave in
Afghanistan after 2014 and make a multiyear financial commitment to the Afghan
Army and the police.
The White House announced last month that
long-delayed talks with the Taliban would begin in Doha, Qatar, where the
Taliban opened what amounts to an embassy-in-exile, complete with their old flag
and a plaque with their official name, “The Islamic Emirate of
Afghanistan.”
But the highly choreographed announcement backfired, with
Afghan officials saying the talks gave the insurgents undeserved legitimacy and
accusing the Obama administration of negotiating behind Mr. Karzai’s back.To the
surprise of American officials, Mr. Karzai then abruptly ended the negotiations
over a long-term security deal. He has said the negotiations would not resume
until the Taliban met directly with representatives of the Afghan government,
essentially linking the security negotiations to a faltering peace process and
making the United States responsible for persuading the Taliban to talk to the
Afghan government.
The Taliban have refused for years to meet directly
with Afghan government negotiators, deriding Mr. Karzai and his ministers as
American puppets.
There have been other points of contention as well.
Meeting with foreign ambassadors recently, Mr. Karzai openly mused that the West
was to blame for the rise of radical Islam. It was not a message that many of
the envoys, whose countries have lost thousands of people in Afghanistan and
spent billions of dollars fighting the Taliban, welcomed.
The troop
decisions are also being made against a backdrop of growing political
uncertainty in Afghanistan and rising concerns that the country’s presidential
election could either be delayed for months or longer, or be so flawed that many
Afghans would not accept its results.
Preparations for the election,
scheduled for next April, are already falling behind. United Nations officials
have begun to say the elections probably cannot be held until next summer, at
the earliest. If the voting does not occur before Afghanistan’s mountain passes
are closed by snow in late fall, it will be extremely difficult to hold a vote
until 2015.
Of potentially bigger concern are the rumors that Mr. Karzai,
in his second term and barred from serving a third, is trying to find a way to
stay in power. Mr. Karzai has repeatedly insisted that he plans to step down
next year.
The ripple effects of a complete American withdrawal would be
significant. Western officials said the Germans and Italians — the two main
European allies who have committed to staying on with substantial forces — would
leave as well. Any smaller nations that envisioned keeping token forces would
most likely have no way of doing so.And Afghanistan would probably see far less
than the roughly $8 billion in annual military and civilian aid it is expecting
in the coming years — an amount that covers more than half the government’s
annual spending.
