U.S. Marines Chief Flags Afghan Risks

KABUL, Nov 29 (nsnewswire) —The Afghan president’s push to delay a security pact with the U.S. has undermined confidence in Afghanistan’s future, testing international support for the country at a crucial moment, the U.S.-led coalition’s top commander said.

U.S. Marine Corps Gen. Joseph Dunford warned that President Hamid Karzai’s failure to quickly sign the agreement could weaken the Afghan economy, embolden the country’s powerful neighbors and ultimately lead to the collapse of the country’s security forces.

“I don’t know if he fully realizes the risks,” Gen. Dunford said in an interview with The Wall Street Journal. “He certainly understands it from an Afghan perspective. I don’t know if he fully appreciates what the implications are for the United States.”

The lack of clarity about the security agreement, which is needed for a U.S.-led force to remain in Afghanistan after the coalition’s current mandate expires in December 2014, is already exacting a toll, Gen. Dunford said.

Relations between Afghanistan and the U.S. are deteriorating after President Hamid Karzai delayed a planned security deal with Western allies. The WSJ’s Yaroslav Trofimov explains what is behind the sudden decline in relations.

“The uncertainty and the lack of confidence about the post-2014 environment has had an adverse effect on the people in some very real ways, whether it be the flight of young people who try to leave the country, whether it be plunging real-estate prices, the rate of the afghani” currency, Gen. Dunford said.
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Gen. Joseph Dunford leaves the Loya Jirga tent in Kabul last week. Reuters

Over the past week, Mr. Karzai has stepped up his confrontation with Washington over the bilateral security agreement, which was approved by Afghanistan’s Loya Jirga assembly on Sunday, after more than a year of difficult negotiations.

Tensions threatened to flare anew late Thursday, when the Afghan presidential palace issued a statement condemning a coalition airstrike in southwestern Helmand province. According to the statement, the strike killed an Afghan child and injured two women.

Mr. Karzai—who frequently blames the coalition for the suffering of ordinary Afghans—has insisted that any deal preclude U.S. and international forces from raiding Afghan homes. The U.S.-led International Security Assistance Force said in a statement that coalition forces had been conducting a military operation in Helmand in pursuit of a “known insurgent” on Thursday. “We are aware of reports regarding potential civilian casualties as the result of an ISAF operation,” the statement read.

In addition to providing a framework for long-term U.S. military presence here, the deal is a prerequisite for billions of dollars in critical military and civilian aid to Afghanistan. Despite a request for prompt ratification by the Loya Jirga, Mr. Karzai in recent days raised several new conditions before signing the agreement, asking for more time and saying the U.S. must first jump-start the peace process with the Taliban insurgents.

In response, the White House warned that a failure to sign the deal by year-end would trigger planning for the so-called “zero option”—the complete withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan at the end of next year.

The breakdown of similar talks in Iraq led to a full U.S. pullout from that country in 2011, with sectarian violence increasing afterward. Gen. Dunford said he remains confident Mr. Karzai will ultimately sign the deal. He added that he was confident there would also be a status of forces agreement that would allow North Atlantic Treaty Organization troops to maintain a presence after 2014.

While Iraq could rely on its oil wealth to fund its security forces, Afghanistan depends on international commitments made at the Chicago NATO summit last year. The summit pledged $4.1 billion a year to bankroll Afghanistan’s 352,000-strong military and police, with only about $500 million of that coming from the Afghan government.

“Right now, I don’t see Afghanistan being able to sustain the Afghan security forces without the Chicago commitments,” Gen. Dunford said.

The Chicago commitments are in addition to a similar amount of civilian aid that was pledged last year at a donor conference in Tokyo. Mr. Karzai’s failure to promptly sign the security agreement would “jeopardize” both pledges, the White House said this week.

Mr. Karzai’s delays are causing growing impatience in Western capitals, said Gen. Dunford., who commands some 48,000 U.S. and 25,000 allied troops in Afghanistan. The U.S. and its NATO allies, he said, would be hard pressed to muster the political will to meet these promises if the security deal gets bogged down.

“All of us have to go to our parliaments, and in the case of the United States, to the Congress, and we have to go and we have to request resources for the campaign,” he said. “And that takes time, you have to articulate exactly what you need those resources for. And so it’s important that we have certainty about post-2014 to generate the resources for post-2014.”

Western ambassadors to Kabul met this week with senior Afghan cabinet members to deliver a similar message. The money pledged by donors, they said, wouldn’t be forthcoming without a security deal.

Finance Minister Omar Zakhilwal acknowledged the discussions, but said in an interview that the back-and-forth over the bilateral security agreement, or BSA, was “not a crisis.”

“It is about how we manage to create the environment for signing the BSA, and that environment will be created. The position of the president is not that he rejects the BSA,” Mr. Zakhilwal said. “I am optimistic about the signing of the BSA in time because the trust-building measures asked by the president are logical and good for both sides, and not as difficult as portrayed.”

With the Taliban insurgents enjoying support from Pakistan and Iran, the delays in signing the BSA can also have direct consequences on the battlefield, Western officials say.

“The uncertainty about 2014 has also affected each of the regional actors around Afghanistan,” said Gen. Dunford. “And if their calculus was to prepare to protect their interests in the context of a chaotic Afghanistan in 2014, I think the calculus is different if what they’re seeing is a reasonable prospect for a stable, secure Afghanistan.” Source: The Wall Street Journal.