Atlantic Sentinel

Tag: Afghanistan

  • Germany Seeks Active Role to Ensure Inclusive Afghan Peace Process

    Heiko Maas
    German foreign minister Heiko Maas attends a memorial service at Camp Marmal, Afghanistan, March 11 (Auswärtiges Amt/Thomas Imo)

    A week after a Taliban attack in Kabul left six people dead and over a hundred wonded, an all-Afghan peace summit is due to start in Doha on Sunday. Germany is co-sponsoring the meeting with Qatar.

    Markus Potzel, Germany’s special representative to Afghanistan and Pakistan, made the announcement and said, “only Afghans themselves can decide the future of their country.”

    Potzel has become a familiar face in Afghanistan. Just a few weeks ago, he held meetings with key stakeholders across the Afghan political spectrum. In May, he had at least two meetings with the Taliban.

    Germany wants to play an active role in the peace process and ensure that it is inclusive. The Afghan government’s exclusion from bilateral talks between the Taliban and the United States is a concern in Berlin. The Germans believe only an all-Afghan process can pave the way to a sustainable settlement. The hope is that the Doha meeting will be a step in that direction. (more…)

  • German Policymakers Worry About Losing Afghan Gains

    American transport aircraft Afghanistan
    An American C-17 Globemaster transport aircraft at Bagram Airfield, Afghanistan, March 7, 2014 (USAF/Brian Wagner)

    Despite American president Donald Trump earlier ruling out negotiations with the Taliban, recent talks in Qatar could pave the way for a Western withdrawal from Afghanistan.

    The prospect is welcomed by many here in Germany, although policymakers worry about the impact on civilian engagement and developmental assistance. (more…)

  • America Declares End of Afghanistan War

    American president Barack Obama called it an historic moment and commanders running the war referred to it as the final step on the road to Afghanistan’s full independence.

    On Wednesday, the thirteen-year operation that the United States called Operation Enduring Freedom passed into history, replaced with a mission that consists purely of advising and assisting Afghan security forces and launching occasional counterterrorism raids on Al Qaeda or Taliban targets.

    “Today’s ceremony in Kabul marks a milestone for our country,” President Obama wrote in a statement. (more…)

  • Afghanistan Finally Signs Security Agreement

    Afghanistan’s new president, Ashraf Ghani, has managed to be more productive in one day than his predecessor, Hamid Karzai, was for months. After nearly a year of stalling by Karzai’s administration over concerns about excessive civilian casualties, Afghanistan and the United States finally ratified a Bilateral Security Agreement on Tuesday — a document that took Afghan and American negotiators a year to draft and one that was the subject of so much confusion and frustration for the Obama Administration this year.

    Rather than signing the agreement, Karzai had pledged to leave the task to his successor. So when Ghani and his challenger, Abdullah Abdullah, formed a unity government after a disputed presidential election this summer, the new administration in Kabul signed the security document on its first official day of business. (more…)

  • Only Thousands of Troops Could Be Left in Afghanistan

    With Afghan election workers continuing to count the ballots of the country’s most important presidential election since 2001, the Obama Administration is once again reopening the debate about how many troops should remain in Afghanistan after the end of this year.

    The debate has been ongoing since last year when Afghanistan’s outgoing president, Hamid Karzai, put his foot down and refused to sign the Bilateral Security Agreement — a document that would allow foreign forces to stay in Afghanistan after NATO’s war mandate expires in December 2014. But with Karzai now due to be replaced by either Abdullah Abdullah or Ashraf Ghani, the administration is putting renewed energy into the question of what kind of force would best accomplish the post-2014 mission.

    Both leading candidates in Afghanistan’s presidential election have signaled their support for the security agreement and both have acknowledged that Afghanistan’s own troops need continued support from America’s and NATO’s if they have any chance at keeping the country secure from the Taliban. The debate inside the White House and Pentagon right now is therefore not about whether American troops should stay but how many should be deployed. (more…)

  • Abdullah, Ghani to Square Off in Second Afghan Vote

    Nearly two weeks after more than seven million Afghans ventured to the polls to participate in the country’s presidential election, the Afghan Independent Election Commission released for the first time initial results of the contest. And, as was expected by Afghan officials and Western analysts monitoring the voting process, the presumed favorites garnered the biggest share of the vote.

    Of the eight candidates, only two managed to score in the double digits. Abdullah Abdullah, President Hamid Karzai’s challenger in the 2009 presidential election, and Ashraf Ghani, a former finance minister and World Bank economist, are at the top of the field with 42 and 38 percent support, respectively. Zalmai Rassoul, the man thought to be favored by Karzai, came in third with nearly 10 percent.

    According to Afghan electoral law, a candidate can only claim the presidency if he manages to draw at least 50 percent of the votes in the first round. Otherwise, the top two candidates have to square off in a second round. (more…)

  • Report Warns Afghanistan Security Force Must Not Shrink

    Over the past several months, discussions over the war in Afghanistan have tended to center on whether President Hamid Karzai will sign the Bilateral Security Agreement that he agreed to last fall. And, if the treaty is signed, what the American and NATO force presence in the country will be after 2014 to shore up the Afghan army and police through continued training and advising.

    What has often been lost in the commentary is a discussion about how large the Afghan National Security Forces should be once counterterrorism and counterinsurgency duties are transferred completely to them. The assumption that the United States and their allies have relied upon is that the Taliban insurgency will be significantly degraded to a point that is manageable for the Afghan army and national police to fight off.

    Earlier this year, a panel of former military commanders and defense experts refuted that assumption. (more…)

  • Prisoner Exchanges Hoped to Revive Taliban Talks

    Is the United States trying to rescue a struggling peace process in Afghanistan? The answer, according to The Daily Beast‘s Josh Rogan, is yes. And just as previous attempts to reach out to senior Taliban officials began with a discussion over prisoner exchanges, Obama Administration officials are hoping that this issue will build the confidence that is sorely needed to open up a comprehensive dialogue between the Afghan government and the insurgents.

    Rogan reports that talks between the Taliban and the United States about exchanging prisoners would be linked to a broader effort “to lay the groundwork for a potential reconciliation between the Afghan government led by Hamid Karzai and the Taliban.”

    As part of the outreach effort, American officials have repeatedly asked the Pakistani government to release a captured Taliban leader. Meanwhile, semi-official talks are ongoing in Doha, Qatar, where the Taliban maintains an office that officially never opened.

    Those who have been following the war in Afghanistan can be forgiven for assuming that peace negotiations are a lost cause. Over the previous three years, Afghan and American officials have launched two separate peace tracks with Taliban representatives, both of which collapsed after only a few sessions. (more…)

  • Karzai Jeopardizes Afghanistan Security Pact

    After a year of negotiations and what was reportedly a tense telephone conversation with Secretary of State John Kerry last week, it looked as though Afghanistan’s president Hamid Karzai was about to finalize a security pact with the United States that allowed for a residual troop presence post 2014. Yet despite agreeing to the terms of the deal, Karzai vowed on Sunday not to sign it until after the presidential elections of April next year.

    In a speech to some 2,500 tribal elders who had gathered in Kabul to discuss the security agreement — which would provide American troops with access to nine military bases and enable them to continue intelligence gathering and training activities — Karzai accused the United States of undermining his presidency through a campaign of disinformation. He intimated that the Americans could not be trusted, even after the tribal assembly had urged him to ratify the agreement next month.

    Sources close to the Afghan president claim that he is perfectly willing to fight the United States on this issue. According to The Washington Post, Karzai believes the Obama Administration is bluffing when it threatens to pull out all remaining troops by the time NATO’s mandate expires in 2014 unless an agreement is ratified before the end of the year. That may turn out to be a fatal miscalculation on his part.

    Why should Karzai put the brakes on a defense relationship that benefits both his government and the United States? And why does he insist on embarrassing an ally that put him in power, kept the Taliban insurgency at bay and poured billions of dollars of aid into his administration’s coffers? (more…)

  • After Years of Friction, Afghan Pact Rests with Tribal Leaders

    After a lengthy negotiation that lasted nearly a year and contained a number of near breakdowns, Afghanistan and the United States agreed in principle to an agreement that would allow NATO forces to remain in the South Asian country after their mandate expires in 2014.

    The deal, referred to as the Security and Defense Cooperation Agreement, is an ambitious document that attempts to lay down the rules and regulations that would govern any future foreign troop presence in the country. It is one that has long topped the agenda of Afghanistan’s president, Hamid Karzai.

    Although the two countries have managed to strike a commonality on what the agreement says, the wording could change considerably over the next several weeks, depending on whether the Afghan tribal assembly and parliament chose to amend it. (more…)

  • Kerry’s Surprise Visit to Afghanistan Yields Draft Agreement

    Negotiations over an agreement for some American forces to remain in Afghanistan after 2014 have been stalled for some time but an unannounced visit to Kabul by Secretary of State John Kerry seems to have yielded some progress — and a draft agreement.

    Among the major differences holding up the negotiations for a Bilateral Security Agreement are longstanding Afghan demands for greater control and better access to American intelligence as well as the stipulation that remaining forces not be subject to Afghan law. Additionally, Afghan are concerned that the agreement lacks a security guarantee to protect the country from Pakistan while permitting the United States to conduct unilateral operations in Afghanistan. (more…)

  • The Price of Withdrawal from Afghanistan

    American soldiers Afghanistan
    American soldiers in the mountains of Bakwa, Afghanistan, February 25, 2010 (USAF/Nicholas Pilch)

    On September 10, 2001, Afghanistan was at best a distant memory to many Americans as the land where the Soviet Union’s Red Army had faced its “Vietnam War.” While many Americans are much more familiar with the country after twelve years of armed conflict, the people of Afghanistan had been suffering the effects of war long before the United States invaded. Aside from dwindling American news coverage of the region, the progress of the quality of life for the Afghan people continues to be impaired by the growing pains of a government in transition.

    Often forgotten in the regales of military heroism and occasional fits of blind nationalism is the silent plight of Afghan women. It would be easy to assume that the perpetual kinetic violence of protracted combat would be the most difficult issue to overcome for Afghanistan but that is not the case. Education, communication and greater connectivity with the outside world remain the only true solutions to the issues that face Afghanistan. (more…)

  • Breakdown in Afghan Security, Taliban Peace Talks Predictable

    The breakdown in both the bilateral security agreement talks between the Afghan government and the United States and the peace talks with the Taliban were far from unexpected. The issues of sovereignty and power remain central to both Afghan and Taliban concerns. While the primarily American concern is the war, and its ending, the main Afghan and Taliban worry looks toward the peace.

    Nominally, it started on Wednesday with the raising of a Taliban flag — black lettering on a white banner — and the revealing of a name plate reading “Political Office of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan” in Doha, Qatar. Though the opening of a physical Taliban office was heralded by many as a progressive step toward reconciliation, it was also at the heart of the breakdown.

    The opening and use of a Taliban office provides the perception of political legitimacy, and therefore legitimate competition, which the unsteady administration of President Hamid Karzai can ill afford.

    In addition, continued American steering of the peace process illustrated time and again the lack of confidence in the staying power of the Afghan republic. (more…)

  • Indo-Iranian Cooperation in Afghanistan Faces Challenges

    India reaffirmed on Saturday its willingness to develop Iran’s Port of Chabahar during the seventeenth meeting of the India-Iran Joint Commission in Tehran. With an initial investment pledge of some $100 million, the move further strengthens the emerging partnership between the two countries in Afghanistan.

    The Chabahar port is critical to India’s Afghanistan policy. In the absence of direct physical access to the country and a hostile Pakistan denying Indian goods transit, the Iranian harbor is the most viable access point India has to Afghanistan and the rest of Central Asia. (more…)

  • Defense Chief’s Afghanistan Visit Marred in Controversy

    A surprise overnight visit to Afghanistan by the new American defense secretary Chuck Hagel turned into a diplomatic headache when a Taliban suicide bomber on a bicycle detonated his explosives outside the Defense Ministry in Kabul. Ten people were killed in the blast and fourteen injured, most of whom were civilians who had congregated near the facility.

    A Taliban spokesmen called the suicide operation a message to America’s new defense chief, that despite NATO investment in Afghanistan over the past twelve years, the country remains an incredibly dangerous place and the Taliban still have the strength and freedom to carry out attacks across the nation.

    The fact that the blast occurred so close to the visiting secretary — some media reports claimed that Hagel actually heard the explosion when it went off — seems to add some credibility to the Taliban’s message.

    Hagel’s trip to Afghanistan came at a particularly stressful time in the broader American-Afghan relationship. In the last two weeks, Afghan president Hamid Karzai has been far more forceful in his speeches and statements, asserting time and again that promoting Afghan sovereignty is a top objective for his government. The issue of Afghan sovereignty has affected just about every major aspect of the NATO’s withdrawal, including control over the detention system and the right to conduct unilateral special forces operations. (more…)