SPY EYES

The United States is considering a proposal to withdraw all its troops from Afghanistan by 2017, say two Republicans as official sources confirm that “the zero-option” was also discussed at a White House meeting on Tuesday.

President Barack Obama and Vice President Joe Biden met Defence Secretary Chuck Hagel and senior US generals at the White House to review their options in Afghanistan. Gen Joseph F. Dunford Jr, commander of US and allied forces in Afghanistan, came from Kabul to attend the meeting.

Gen Martin E. Dempsey, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the vice chairman, Adm James A. Winnefeld Jr; Gen Lloyd J. Austin III, the head of the United States Central Command; and Adm William H. McRaven, head of the United States Special Operations Command, also participated in the discussion.

Separately, the White House reconfirmed its plan to withdraw all but a small residual force from Afghanistan by the end of 2014.

“Together with our allies, we will complete our mission there by the end of this year. And America’s longest war will finally be over,” White House Press Secretary Jay Carney told a briefing.

The United States, however, wants to keep a residual force of about 10,000 after 2014 as well, provided the Afghan government signs a bilateral security agreement.

But on Tuesday evening, two senior Republican Senators, John McCain and Lindsey Graham, told reporters that

And this caused Afghan President Hamid Karzai to move away from the United States and hold secret talks with the Taliban, they argued.

The White House Press Secretary did not directly confirm that the administration was considering such a plan but when asked to comment on the statement by the two senators, he said: “Some senators envision a world in which US troops remain in Afghanistan for decades. Some senators envisioned a world in which US troops remained in Iraq for decades. That’s not the president’s vision.”

Although the US media reported that the Obama administration was upset with Mr Karzai for holding secret talks with the Taliban, the State Department welcomed the talks.

“It’s important to note here that we’ve long strongly supported an Afghan-led reconciliation, which would, of course, be Afghans talking to Afghans,” State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki said. “So the notion that we wouldn’t support that dialogue is inaccurate.”

The US, however, was not talking to the Taliban, she added.

In a report on President Obama’s meeting with his generals, The New York Times said that the Pentagon too was not against the “zero option”.

“The feeling among the generals is that, ‘Hey, if Karzai doesn’t sign this thing, we are fine with pulling back to zero’,” a senior Pentagon official told NYT.

“Moving to zero troops no longer seems unthinkable, especially with alternatives like drones available,” the official added.

The report said that Vice President Biden had been pressing officials with sceptical questions of what a residual force would accomplish, and aides to Mr Obama have suggested alternatives that would result in a lower troop presence than the military would prefer.

US generals want at least 10,000 American and 5,000 Nato troops in Afghanistan after 2014, saying that if the Afghan government does not accept this deployment, the United States should withdraw all its forces.

Dawn News

After more than thirteen years of security operations in Afghanistan by the United States and her NATO allies, the future of Afghanistan still remains uncertain – and so does the peace and security of the Central and South Asian regions

It has been over 152 months since the United States Armed Forces launched Operation Enduring Freedom in retaliation to the 9/11 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. America’s NATO allies also joined in the military invasion of the landlocked country, invoking Article 5 of the Washington Treaty of the North Atlantic Alliance for the first time since the creation of the “Allied” alliance that was primarily directed to respond to an attack from the Soviet Union on the West. The Article stated that an attack on one or more of the NATO countries would constitute an attack on all NATO allies, “each of them, in exercise of the right of individual or collective self-defense recognized by Article 51 of the Charter of the United Nations, will assist the Party or Parties so attacked by taking forthwith, individually and in concert with the other Parties, such action as it deems necessary, including the use of armed force, to restore and maintain the security of the North Atlantic area”. Though a NATO operation in Afghanistan seemed far-fetched at the time, since the Alliance’s main theater of operations was Europe – or anywhere they (or democracy, as they were protecting) were threatened by the former Soviet Union – but NATO’s “Strategic Concept” after the collapse of the Soviet Union had already accounted for and recognized the threat of international terrorism posed by transnational groups which may or may not have state support. Such a strategic realignment of the Alliance was necessary given that their principal adversary had ceased to exist in 1991. The new Strategic Concept was finalized and approved by the Heads of State and Government participating in the meeting of the North Atlantic Council in Washington D.C. in April 1999. Two years later, this Strategic Concept was put to the test.

Twelve years and three months later, the United States and the NATO militaries – both collectively and individually – totaling troops from almost 50 countries have failed to achieve their targets in Afghanistan. Instead of completely decimating Al Qaeda as an operational force, they targeted the organization’s top leadership but transformed it into a global brand name under which various regional, national and local Muslim radical terror groups found refuge, support, ideological encouragement, and even financial backing and specialist recruits and/or operatives. Despite the touted achievements of restoring (or introducing) democracy in Afghanistan, the state institutions of the landlocked Central Asian nation and its political process remain fragile even after many years of existence and numerous cycles of functioning. As the Afghan Taliban melted away in the face of the awesome force and unchallengeable technological might of the U.S. military, the operations of Western forces and their treatment of the local population in a conservative Muslim society led to the “rebirth” of the insurgent movement in 2005: by this time, they had closely studied their invaders and observed how they operated and applied their technological advantages to the battlefield. The reborn Afghan Taliban developed their own new strategy for different provinces, regions, and for the whole country – in effect, they had transformed the Western forces’ technological superiority into a liability for not only the U.S. and NATO, but also for the indigenous Afghan security forces that were being trained along state-of-the-art lines.

But the U.S. and NATO were never going to stay in Afghanistan forever – the UN Security Council mandate (Resolution 1386 adopted on December 20, 2001, which followed Resolutions 1267 and 1333 adopted in earlier years) for military intervention in Afghanistan was time-bound, and by June 18, 2013, the Afghan National Security Forces (ANSF), comprised of the Afghan National Army (ANA) and Afghan National Police (ANP), officially took over security responsibilities throughout Afghanistan after a four-phase transfer of these responsibilities from NATO to the ANSF. Nevertheless, this is no indication that the West left – or is leaving – a sustainable military alternative in its place: The Guardian’s Emma Graham-Harrison noted that “the showpiece ceremony was more political theatre than military handover” on the very day that the transfer took place. There is an “Enduring Strategic Partnership Agreement between the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan and the United States of America” that provides the long-term framework for the relationship between Afghanistan and the U.S. after the drawdown of U.S. forces in the Afghanistan war, but its endurance is already being tested. This Agreement was signed by Afghan President Hamid Karzai and U.S. President Barack Obama on May 02, 2012 – the first anniversary of the death of Osama bin Laden, incidentally or deliberately – and as Afghanistan was designated a major non-NATO ally, negotiations for a Bilateral Security Agreement were launched in November of that year. Then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said on July 07, 2014 that the United States “not even imagining abandoning Afghanistan. Quite the opposite. We are building a partnership with Afghanistan that will endure far into the future”. As far as the intentions of Mrs. Clinton’s statement is concerned, it appears that the U.S. has at least learnt from its earlier mistake when it did abandon Afghanistan after “Charlie Wilson’s War”. But actions always speak louder than words.

The Bilateral Security Agreement (BSA) is much like the Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA) that the U.S. wished to have in place with the regime that was installed in Iraq after the ouster of Saddam Hussein: the U.S.-Iraq “SOFA” provided no cushion for any remaining U.S. troops on the ground in Iraq after their total withdrawal, and the agreement expired at midnight on December 31, 2011, even though the United States completed its final withdrawal of troops from Iraq on December 16, 2011. The SOFA was fiercely resisted by Iraqi society and legislators because it was primarily designed to provide immunity to U.S. troops operating in Iraq – pursuant negotiations over the SOFA led to some immunity for some U.S. contractors and none for others. Eventually, the SOFA met its eventual demise: after 2011, no residual combat force of the U.S. military was left or stationed in Iraq.

The negotiations – or arguments, rather – over the BSA are much similar to those about the SOFA: immunity for U.S. troops, the number and jurisdictional responsibility of the residual Western troops in Afghanistan, etc. Under the strategic partnership agreement signed by the U.S. and Afghanistan in May 2012, both countries were obliged to negotiate a bilateral security agreement within one year and these negotiations were scheduled to begin on November 15, 2012. The talks were to attempt to set conditions for U.S. forces in Afghanistan after 2014 as part of a “train, advise and assist” mission and were aimed at building a security framework, not a detailed agreement for the status of residual U.S. or NATO forces in Afghanistan beyond their own mandates (as legislated by their own countries back in the West). Besides immunity from Afghan prosecution for U.S. soldiers accused of crimes and the Afghan demand that the U.S. guarantee that it will respond to any cross-border incursion or artillery attack on Afghanistan’s territory, negotiators will also attempt to set broad outlines for air rights over Afghanistan and the use and disposition of hundreds of U.S.-built bases — especially the mega-size air bases in Bagram and Kandahar built with over billions of dollars of money funneled into Afghanistan from the U.S. and other Western countries’ defense budgets.

Plans by the US to engage in peace talks with the Taliban have resulted in suspension of bilateral security discussions between the US and Afghanistan on June 19, 2013, rendering the first blow to American plans for the Asian region post-2014. The “talk-fight” approach of the Obama administration first pursued by General McChrystal, and then by General Petraeus, did not settle well with President Karzai, who – in his twilight years as modern Afghanistan’s first head of state – discovered some unique political courage and a novel way to deal with the very powers that put and kept him in office in the first place. Talks between the United States and Afghanistan over the bilateral security agreement 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. President Karzai also wanted 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. To reverse the pressure on the Karzai administration and the ANSF, the U.S. began contemplating a faster pullout from Afghanistan.

The White House announced in June 2013 that long-delayed peace talks with the Taliban would begin in Doha, Qatar, where the Taliban opened what amounted 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 Karzai’s back. To the surprise of American officials, President Karzai then abruptly ended the negotiations over the bilateral security agreement altogether, saying that 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.

By November 2013, it was announced that the U.S. and Afghanistan had reached a “final and conclusive” agreement on the final language of the BSA, but the State Department said that it was not a final agreement and that the U.S. was still reviewing it. A letter written by U.S. President Obama said U.S. forces will be “cooperating in training, advising, and assisting” Afghan forces “in a targeted, smaller, counterterrorism mission.” There was no stipulated limit on how long U.S. forces would remain in Afghanistan, and the accord also has no expiration date. The wording of agreement stated that “unless mutually agreed, United States forces shall not conduct combat operations in Afghanistan”. It stated the parties’ “intention of protecting U.S. and Afghan national interests without U.S. military counter-terrorism operations” but does not specifically prohibit such operations. Moreover, United States Special Operations forces will retain leeway to conduct antiterrorism raids on private Afghan homes. This ‘door kicking’ policy and the Drone strikes are the reason behind rampant anti US sentiment.

The agreement text grants the United States full legal jurisdiction over U.S. troops and Defense Department civilians working in Afghanistan. On troop immunity, it says that Afghanistan agrees “that the United States shall have the exclusive right to exercise jurisdiction” over members of the force and its civilian component “in respect of any criminal or civil offenses committed in the territory of Afghanistan”, and that “Afghanistan authorizes the United States to hold [civil and criminal] trial in such cases, or take other disciplinary action, as appropriate, in the territory of Afghanistan”, but Afghan authorities can ask that anyone be taken out of the country. Afghan authorities are prohibited from detaining American troops or U.S. civilians working with them. In the event that happens “for any reason,” however, those personnel “shall be immediately handed over to United States forces authorities”. The agreement also specifies that American troops and civilians cannot be surrendered to any “international tribunal or any other entity or state” without express U.S. consent. Afghanistan, it says, retains legal jurisdiction over civilian contractors, and contractors are prohibited from wearing military uniforms and “may only carry weapons in accordance with Afghan laws and regulations”. The draft agreement says that U.S. military and Defense Department civilian personnel are exempt from visa requirements and taxation. Afghan taxes and other fees will not be imposed on the entry or exit of goods specifically for the use of U.S. forces.

The document has a clause committing the United States to consulting with the Afghan government in the event of external threats, but not the sort of NATO-style mutual defense pact the Afghans originally wanted. “The United States shall regard with grave concern any external aggression or threat of external aggression against the sovereignty, independence, and territorial integrity of Afghanistan,” the proposed agreement states. U.S. President Obama added in a letter to his Afghan counterpart: “The US commitment to Afghanistan’s independence, territorial integrity, and national unity, as enshrined in our Strategic Partnership Agreement, is enduring, as is our respect for Afghan sovereignty”.

An annex to the draft lists locations where Afghanistan agrees to provide facilities for U.S. forces, including Kabul; Bagram, north of the capital, where the United States has its largest current base; Mazar-e Sharif in northern Afghanistan; Herat in the west; Kandahar in the south; Shindand in Herat province; Sharab in Helmand province; Gardez, south of Kabul; and Jalalabad, to the east. The draft document gives the U.S. the right to deploy American forces on nine bases, including the two biggest: the airfields in Bagram and Kandahar. It also allows U.S. military planes to fly in and out of Afghanistan from seven air bases, including Kabul International Airport. U.S. forces would be permitted under the document to transport supplies from five border crossings, described along with the air bases as “official points of embarkation and debarkation”. All bases in Afghanistan would revert to Afghan ownership and sovereignty after 2014, according to the draft. If approved, the BSA would allow the U.S. to deploy military advisors to train and equip Afghan security forces, along with U.S. special-operations troops for anti-terrorism missions against Al Qaeda and other terrorist groups, but President Obama will determine the size of the force.

The text of the BSA was approved by the delegates at the Loya Jirga (the Grand Assembly, composed of members of the Afghan parliament, the Elders Assembly, tribal leaders, and other important personalities of Afghan society, convened to give assent on issues of national importance) on November 24, 2013 and must now be signed by the Afghanistan president, who rejected the final recommendation of the Loya Jirga to promptly sign the BSA with the United States. The jirga even set a few conditions before expressing approval for the agreement among them a 10-year time limit on the post-2014 troop presence and reparations for damages caused by U.S. troops deployed in Afghanistan. The Mesherano Jirga (Assembly of Elders) also demanded the release of 19 Afghans from the U.S. detention center at Guantanamo Bay and a stronger U.S. pledge to defend Afghanistan from any incursion from its neighbors, particularly Pakistan. Still, President Karzai has given no date as to when he will sign the BSA: it is his overt stance that the U.S. should wait till the Afghan legislative and presidential elections take place in April 2014, after which the BSA would be ratified by Karzai’s successor. Afghanistan’s deputy foreign minister, Ershad Ahmadi, acknowledged that the BSA becomes more vital as Afghanistan undergoes this crucial political and security transition during 2014. Even though this would give the U.S.-Afghan agreement more legitimacy, it is obvious – and many are sure – that the BSA will be signed, whether sooner or later, because of the interests and compulsions of both parties. The recommendation that the agreement be signed before the April 2014 election comes in direct opposition to a statement made by Karzai in a speech delivered on the gathering’s opening day “this pact should be signed when the election has already taken place, properly and with dignity”. Karzai’s recommendations came after he conceded that neither he nor the United States trusted one another. Washington quickly replied that it was “neither practical nor possible” to delay signing the BSA beyond the end of 2013. Analysts believe that by dillydallying on the issue of the BSA, and by extracting the maximum gains for Afghanistan from the U.S., Karzai wants to establish his legacy in Afghanistan as a positive one, even if the Taliban come to power when the U.S. leaves.

Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Carl Levin told President Hamid Karzai in October 2013 that the United States will “not be able” to provide any assistance to Afghanistan until the Bilateral Security Agreement (BSA) between the two countries is signed.

Moreover, The Afghan president said in a speech at Kabul’s Polytechnic University after the conclusion of the “consultative” Loya Jirga (Grand Assembly) that it has been made clear to him that peace in Afghanistan is “first in US hands” and second in Pakistani hands. Karzai said he had seen documentation proving as much. Alluding to the role of neighbouring Pakistan in the decades-long Afghan conflict, Karzai said “if we started the war, we can end it; if we haven’t, we can’t. This war was started by someone else”. The president went on to deliver a message to the United States, including James Cunningham, US ambassador to Afghanistan, who was seated in the audience at Kabul’s Polytechnic University. “Afghanistan has proved its friendship to you … Now, the US should prove its honesty with us”: this is an implicit signal to the U.S. that they should give more priority to Afghanistan than to Pakistan, and that if push comes to shove, the U.S. should choose Afghanistan rather than Pakistan – the wording of the BSA that the U.S. would protect Afghanistan even from a military attack by Pakistan is also a clear indication of the same.

After invoking all the caveats above, President Hamid Karzai, said that he has agreed to sign the BSA with the United States if it “brings peace to the nation” after a more than three-decade-long conflict. Speaking at the Kabul Polytechnic University, Karzai said the result of the Bilateral Strategic Agreement between Kabul and Washington must be peace. But if Karzai thinks that his legacy of a strong and nationalist Afghan leader will be cemented if he binds the U.S. to the Afghan corner with or without support from the Afghan Taliban, or even Pakistan for that matter, then it is he himself who is creating the obstacle for Afghan peace – an obstacle that will become all too visible leading up to and during the crucial April 2014 elections in Afghanistan. By doing so, President Karzai is buying himself time so that he does not have to sign off on an agreement that sells Afghanistan’s sovereignty and the average Afghan’s peace of mind and sanctity of a secure life, but he may also be giving more room for the Afghan Taliban and the U.S. to strike a deal on their own, and let the Afghan Taliban come to power in a completely new setup that starts taking shape in 2014, and crystallizes later on. However, the U.S. knows that it will not be able to control the Afghan Taliban, since it has not been able to militarily defeat them, or coerce them into staying on the negotiating table despite all efforts from Pakistan and Saudi Arabia, so it needs the Karzai dispensations and the pro-U.S. warlords to have more cards to deal or play with in Asia – Central and South – during 2014 and beyond. Even as of January 17, 2014, the U.S. is urging President Karzai to “quickly” sign the Bilateral Security Agreement.

As alternate approaches to the post-2014 U.S.-Afghan (and regional) security pact are being developed, considered, and discussed at various levels, the security of the Asian region, particularly of Central and South Asia, largely depends on whether the U.S. finds a way to stay in Afghanistan during or after 2014, or whether it has to completely withdraw from Afghanistan. America may even have to decrease its presence in Pakistan, given the rousing anti-U.S. sentiment on the Pakistani street, which is physically obstructing the NATO supply routes on which the Alliance is depending so as to ensure a smooth withdrawal. If everything does not go according to plan, then the Western forces leaving Afghanistan will be going home with a mission unaccomplished and with their tails between their legs: what they will leave behind is a multidimensional monster of a problem (transnational terrorism with a radical Islamist tinge for one) that Afghanistan, Pakistan, India, Iran, Central Asian states, and even China, will have to deal with for years to come. If the Afghan Taliban can encourage a Taliban movement in Pakistan – the TTP – then there will be no stopping a SIMI or Afghan Mujahideen from acquiring the same kind of power in India, and Central Asian states with Muslim populations – conservative or otherwise – will also have the same specter to face and deal with. The U.S. looked towards India’s intelligence officials for nudging President Karzai towards signing the BSA post-haste; in response, India has rejected the agreed-upon exit strategy for foreign troops stationed in Afghanistan. Defense analysts construe this as a signal of their failure to achieve a confirmation for the Indo-U.S. plans for Afghanistan and Central Asia during and after 2014, compounding a decade of India’s strategic failure in Central Asia despite piggybacking on the U.S. China is already handling – and has to a large extent, crushed – an Islamist terror movement in the Uighur-dominated areas near the Afghanistan and Pakistan borders, and will obviously prepare itself for any eventuality: if the U.S. stays and deals with Islamic terror groups, or if it leaves regional countries to its own devices and exacerbates the problem so that someone else (its perceived enemies, like Pakistan, and its accepted adversary, like China) can deal with it. Clearly a regional approach that emphasizes economic integration and cooperation is needed and all of Afghanistan’s neighbors—Pakistan, India, Iran, CAS. Russia and China—have to be on board.

TACSTRAT ANALYSIS

It’s become a small industry. In foreign policy research institutes around Europe and the US the last six months have been spent producing papers, attending seminars, giving lectures and contributing to workshops all focused on answering the question: ‘what will happen in Afghanistan after 2014?’ I have been to a fair few myself.

It’s a question that has everything a think tank needs. It’s complicated, forward looking and has implications for policy. Influencing policymakers, after all, is a think tank’s holy grail.

And the reason everyone is asking the question is clear enough. The next 12 months will see two major developments in Afghanistan: the end of Hamid Karzai’s presidency and the withdrawal or reduction of US forces.

And one thing is clear. If Karzai’s now somewhat desperate attempts to establish himself as something other than a US puppet go on long enough, and he manages to scupper the Bilateral Security Agreement, then Congress in Washington will be only too happy to save some cash and leave Afghanistan to its own devices.

The general consensus in the research institutes is that, one way or another, Afghanistan is going to suffer from a long running civil conflict in which no one group will be able to secure a clear victory.

Pakistan, meanwhile, will need to spend 2014 developing a new Afghan strategy. The previous one, after all, has sunk without trace. The idea was that as the world tried to put together a post-2014 political settlement in Afghanistan, various big powers would come knocking on Pakistan’s door seeing it as the only country capable of delivering the Afghan Taliban.

It sounded like a good plan but was based on a flawed premise. The Afghan Taliban, it turns out, have ideas of their own and Pakistan could not deliver them. The consequence has been the increasing irrelevance of Pakistan on the international arena. Closer to home, meanwhile, Pakistan faces an unstable Afghanistan which no doubt will serve as a sanctuary to the TTP.

But not all of Pakistan’s 2014 developments will be made in Afghanistan. Domestic trends will also be at work.

As Nawaz Sharif looks ahead to the new year he should have some confidence that he will complete his third term as prime minister. The PPP is still reeling from its disastrous election and the PTI’s electoral challenge may well be past its peak. As for the army, it would have little popular backing for a coup.

Of course Pakistan’s habitually crisis-ridden political system can take unexpected, rapid turns but, by historical standards, Nawaz Sharif is in a remarkably secure position.

At the same time, there is plenty for him to worry about over the next 12 months. Two issues above all the others will be urgent: the militancy and the dire economic situation. Going by past precedent he is unlikely to do much about either. And, to be fair, in both cases he may have good reason for that.

Shortly after the election Sharif secured an IMF extended facility worth $6.6bn – only slightly below the $7.2bn he asked for. The IMF attached various conditions to be implemented over a 10-year period but, given past history, it presumably has little expectation of them being respected.

Sharif is well aware that international concern about Pakistan’s nuclear assets means the IMF is likely to give the country support even when its conditions are ignored. And since Sharif knows the money will keep flowing, he has little reason to court unpopularity by taking tough economic decisions.

Policy towards the militants, meanwhile, will remain in the hands of the military. Nawaz Sharif could do more to lead the campaign against the militants but he will be unwilling to stick his neck out when he does not control the levers of power.

In 2009 the TTP had a high degree of control of 18 administrative units such as tribal areas within Fata, districts including Upper Dir and Swat and frontier regions such as Bannu. They now have one genuine stronghold: North Waziristan.

Although the number of militant attacks in Pakistan remains very high, it is worth remembering that the situation has improved since 2009. According to the Pakistan Institute for Peace Studies 5,047 people were killed in 2012 in politically inspired violence compared to 12,632 in 2009.

The question is whether the army will try to push the TTP out of North Waziristan. And for three reasons the army might wait until after 2014 before making up its mind.

First, it will be easier to sell the policy of clearing North Waziristan to the Pakistan electorate as being in Pakistan’s rather than the US’s interest after the US drawdown in Afghanistan is done. Second, even though the army is convinced that talks will fail, it will have to let negotiations between the government and the TTP run their course. Third, it’s always easier to put things off.

For decades now dire prognostications have been made about Pakistan. Many have been proven to be true. The army’s support for Kashmir militant groups did lead to a more general jihadi culture. The failure to give the Baloch people what they needed did lead to a violent insurgency. The politicians’ flagrant corruption did undermine support for the democratic process.

At the same time many pessimistic predictions have turned out to be wrong. The nuclear weapons have not fallen into the hands of jihadis; the economy has not collapsed and the country’s territorial integrity has not been compromised.

With the benefit of hindsight it would seem the best prediction might have been that Pakistan will, somehow, muddle along.

And as we all look ahead to 2014 that’s probably about as good a prediction as you’ll get.

The writer is a freelance British journalist, one of the hosts of BBC’s Newshour and the author of the new political thriller, Target Britain.

By Owen Bennett-Jones
The News International

LONDON — By defying Washington and delaying his signature on the bilateral security agreement with the United States to continue financial and military aid for Afghanistan after 2014, President Hamid Karzai is being both very astute and supremely foolish — astute in a personal and Afghan context, foolish in an American one.

Mr. Karzai is clearly trying to garner nationalist support, especially among his fellow Pashtuns. He may also hope that withholding his signature may give him some leverage over Washington during next April’s Afghan presidential elections — which he may well need, since these elections are extremely unlikely to proceed according to strict Western democratic rules. Mr. Karzai’s own desired future as a powerful figure in Afghanistan depends on this, but he may also genuinely believe that an ability to manage these elections peacefully (rather than democratically) is crucial to preserving the Afghan state.

Unfortunately, United States support is also crucial to Afghanistan’s future. The key issue is not American bases, but money. At present, barely one tenth of the Afghan budget is paid for by Afghan revenues, and there is no realistic chance of quickly increasing those revenues. Virtually the entire military and development budgets are paid for through American and Western aid. Washington has insisted that a deal that would allow for an American troop presence through 2024 and sets the stage for billions of dollars in international aid needs to be signed by the end of this year.

This is where Mr. Karzai’s maneuvering is so dangerous for Afghanistan. For he does not appear to recognize the depth of the desire in Washington and European capitals to be quit of the whole Afghan morass. Mr. Karzai is therefore playing Russian roulette with a pistol pointed at his country’s head, and may not even realize how many of its chambers are loaded.

Exasperation with Afghanistan and those in Mr. Karzai’s circle has built up almost since the day the West started to put its government together. Anger has been generated above all by accusations of corruption and dealing in heroin. These allegations are naturally infuriating to Western voters and their representatives.

Yet it is also possible to view this issue in another light: that of an existential clash between the West’s ideologically based aims and Afghanistan’s political realities and traditions. Alongside this lies another clash, between completely contradictory policies by the United States itself. For the agenda that the West set in Afghanistan, and the highly centralized modern state that was supposed to carry out its changes, could only have been achieved over a vastly longer period of time and with a vastly greater Western commitment than any administration in Washington has been prepared to contemplate.

Lacking this Western commitment, Mr. Karzai has been forced to pursue the strategy of weak Afghan states throughout much of the country’s history — that of buying off local strongmen, ethnic groups and tribes, and turning a blind eye to their activities. We in the West call this corruption and criminality. Yet this criticism is hardly honest. It was the United States military, with its notorious suitcases of dollars, which helped re-establish warlord control over the Pashtun territories after the fall of the Taliban. American force helped these warlords to eliminate rivals, and in doing so, roused local anger, which helped provide a basis for the return of the Taliban.

To this day, the United States and NATO actively support a number of criminal chieftains in southern Afghanistan, simply because they see no better alternatives when it comes to fighting the Taliban. How exactly does this differ from the Karzai behavior we so bitterly condemn? It may well be true that Mr. Karzai is neither the most honest nor the most stable of individuals; but the conflicting pressures he faces and the mixed messages he receives could drive anyone to dishonesty or madness.

It is important to recognize the West’s record, because real or feigned moral outrage is being used today by Western politicians whose real desire is to please their own electorates by ending further commitments to Afghanistan.

If the United States does withdraw its forces and end its aid, the result will be a collapse of the Afghan National Army and state, just as both collapsed when Soviet aid ended in early 1992 with the demise of the Soviet Union. As they did then, Afghan soldiers will go home with their weapons to join a range of different militias and gangs. As after 1992, Afghanistan will be plunged into anarchy — precisely the situation that brought the Taliban to power in the first place.

Moreover, the civil war of the 1990s was one to which the United States had contributed immensely, first by stuffing the anti-Soviet mujahideen with American money and weapons, and then walking away from any attempt to broker an agreement between the different Afghan forces. If today we end help to an Afghan state that we have so designed that it cannot survive without our help, then for the second time in a generation we will have betrayed the people of Afghanistan.

Assuming that Mr. Karzai does eventually sign the security agreement, the United States needs to continue full and enhanced support for Afghanistan. Recognizing that aid cannot last for more than a few years at present levels, the Obama administration should urgently pursue new talks with the Taliban. To enable this, Washington should agree to the Taliban demand to release a number of prisoners, and remove Taliban leaders from its terrorism lists, allowing them to take part in international discussions.

The central fault of the Obama administration’s Afghan strategy is that it has been half-hearted in everything. It launched a half-hearted military surge with an absurdly short deadline, followed by a half-hearted commitment to further military support, and then accompanied this with half-hearted peace overtures. If Washington does not finally start paying attention, it will risk a catastrophe in Afghanistan that would also be the greatest blow to American prestige since the fall of Saigon.

By ANATOL LIEVEN
THE NEW YORK TIMES

Anatol Lieven, a professor in the War Studies Department of King’s College London and a senior fellow at the New America Foundation in Washington, is the author of “Pakistan: A Hard Country.”

The disrupted plan involved Afghan intelligence trying to work with the Pakistan Taliban, allies of Al Qaeda, in order to find a trump card in a baroque regional power game that is likely to intensify after the American withdrawal next year, the officials said. And what started the hard feelings was that the Americans caught them red-handed.

Tipped off to the plan, United States Special Forces raided an Afghan convoy that was ushering a senior Pakistan Taliban militant, Latif Mehsud, to Kabul for secret talks last month, and now have Mr. Mehsud in custody.

Publicly, the Afghan government has described Mr. Mehsud as an insurgent peace emissary. But according to Afghan officials, the ultimate plan was to take revenge on the Pakistani military.

In the murk of intrigue and paranoia that dominates the relationship between Pakistan and Afghanistan, the Pakistanis have long had the upper hand. A favorite complaint of Afghan officials is how Pakistani military intelligence has sheltered and nurtured the Taliban and supported their insurgency against the Afghan government.

Now, not content to be merely the target of a proxy war, the Afghan government decided to recruit proxies of its own by seeking to aid the Pakistan Taliban in their fight against Pakistan’s security forces, according to Afghan officials. And they were beginning to make progress over the past year, they say, before the American raid exposed them.

Although Afghan anger over the raid has been an open issue since it was revealed in news reports this month, it is only now that the full purpose of the Afghan operation that prompted the raid has been detailed by American and Afghan officials. Those officials spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss secret intelligence matters.

The thinking, Afghan officials said, was that the Afghans could later gain an advantage in negotiations with the Pakistani government by offering to back off their support for the militants.

Aiding the Pakistan Taliban was an “opportunity to bring peace on our terms,” one senior Afghan security official said.

From the American standpoint, though, it has exposed a new level of futility in the war effort here. Not only has Washington failed to persuade Pakistan to stop using militants to destabilize its neighbors — a major American foreign policy goal in recent years — but its failure also appears to have persuaded Afghanistan to try the same thing.

Worse still, for American officials, was the Afghans’ choice of militant allies. Though the Afghan and Pakistan Taliban are operationally distinct, they are loosely aligned; the Pakistani insurgents, for instance, pledge allegiance to Mullah Muhammad Omar, the founder of the Afghan Taliban. In the estimation of American officials, support for one invariably bleeds into assistance for the other.

At the same time, the Pakistan Taliban shares its base in the tribal areas of Pakistan with a number of Islamist groups that have tried to mount attacks in the West, including the remnants of Al Qaeda’s original leadership. The Pakistan Taliban have also showed a willingness to strike beyond the region, unlike the Afghan Taliban. Mr. Mehsud, for instance, is suspected of having a role in the foiled plot to detonate a car bomb in Times Square in 2010, American officials said.

American officials said they were also worried that the Afghan actions would give credibility to Pakistani complaints that enemies based in Afghanistan presented them with a threat equivalent to the Afghan insurgency. No one in the Western intelligence community believes the comparison to be anywhere close, given that the Afghan Taliban insurgency, with help from its Pakistani allies, has killed tens of thousands of people in Afghanistan in the past 12 years, including more than 2,000 Americans.

“What were they thinking?” said one American official of his Afghan counterparts.

Both Afghan and American officials said the Afghan plan to aid the Pakistan Taliban was in its preliminary stages when Mr. Mehsud was seized by American forces. But they agree on little else.

American officials interviewed about the raid say they saved Afghanistan from folly. Pakistan’s use of militants has left that country torn by violence with group after group spinning out of the government’s control — the Pakistan Taliban being Exhibit A. The Americans also said it was not clear how much help the Afghans could actually provide the Pakistan Taliban.