Afghan Endgame: US Withdrawal, Taliban negotiations, Pakistan's position

[Saifullah Sani]

President Obama is set to make a major announcement about American troops in Afghanistan on Wednesday. Tune in to CNN, CNN.com/live and the CNN Mobile Apps for live coverage of the President's speech live Wednesday at 8 p.m. ET and check out the Afghanistan Crossroads blog for more on the Afghan conflict.

Washington (CNN) -- President Barack Obama announced Wednesday night that all of the 33,000 additional U.S. forces he ordered to Afghanistan in December 2009 would be home within the next 15 months.

In a nationally televised address from the East Room of the White House, Obama said 10,000 of the so-called "surge" forces would withdraw by the end of this year, and the other 23,000 would leave Afghanistan by September 2012.

The troop withdrawals will begin next month, as promised when Obama ordered the surge in a speech 18 months ago at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, New York.

After the departure of all the surge forces, the total U.S. military deployment in Afghanistan would be just under 70,000 troops.

Obama's time frame would give U.S. commanders another two "fighting" seasons with the bulk of U.S. forces still available for combat operations.
It also would bring the surge troops home before the November 2012 election in which Obama will seek a second term.

According to senior administration officials, the troop surge fulfilled a strategy to refocus the U.S. war effort from Iraq to Afghanistan.

Due to the surge, the officials told reporters, the military mission in Afghanistan has made great progress toward its objectives of dismantling and defeating al Qaeda in the region while stabilizing the country to prevent it from again being a safe haven for terrorist attacks on the United States.

The killing of al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden in early May and the success in reversing Taliban momentum in the southern provinces of Helmand and Kandahar enabled the beginning of a troop withdrawal that will culminate with handing over security responsibilities to Afghan forces in 2014, the senior administration officials said on condition of not being identified.

Outgoing Defense Secretary Robert Gates has pushed for additional time to roll back Taliban gains in the country before starting any significant withdrawal -- a position at odds with a majority of Americans, according to recent public opinion surveys.

Gates -- along with Afghan war commander Gen. David Petraeus -- had pushed for an initial drawdown of 3,000 to 5,000 troops this year, according to a congressional source. Gates also urged the president to withdraw support troops only -- not combat troops.

Obama, however, ultimately decided to adopt a more aggressive withdrawal plan. The senior administration officials said Obama's withdrawal schedule fell within the range of options presented to him by Petraeus, who has been nominated to become CIA director to succeed Leon Panetta, who will take over as defense secretary when Gates steps down at the end of the month.

Gates acknowledged Tuesday that the president must take into account public opinion and congressional support for further military engagement.

"Sustainability here at home" is an important consideration, Gates said, noting that people are "tired of a decade of war."

Public exhaustion with the conflict is reflected in recent public opinion polls. Nearly three-quarters of Americans support the United States pulling some or all of its forces from Afghanistan, according to a June 3-7 CNN/Opinion Research Corp. survey.

That figure jumped 10 percentage points since May, likely as a result of the death of bin Laden, pollsters said.

Republicans -- who have been the strongest supporters of the U.S. military presence in Afghanistan -- are shifting their opinion on the conflict. In May, 47% of Republicans said they favored a partial or full withdrawal of American troops. That figure rose to 60% this month.

The sharp divisions have been reflected in Congress, where both Democrats and Republicans are increasingly split.

House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, acknowledged Wednesday the public is "a bit weary" about the war but said there should not be any "precipitous withdrawal" of U.S. forces.

"We've got an awful lot invested" in Afghanistan, Boehner said, adding that political leaders shouldn't "jeopardize the success that we've made."

But Sen. Carl Levin of Michigan, the Democratic chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, repeated his call for a withdrawal of 15,000 troops this year.

"The level of U.S. troop reductions in Afghanistan needs to be significant to achieve its purpose -- letting the Afghan government know we are determined to shift primary responsibility for their security to the Afghan security forces," Levin said Tuesday in a statement.

Sen. Joe Manchin, D-West Virginia, called Tuesday for a "substantial and responsible reduction" in troop levels, arguing the war has become fiscally irresponsible and more resources need to be focused on domestic problems.

The United States has spent roughly $443 billion on the war in Afghanistan, according to budget analysts. According to Travis Sharp, a researcher at the Center for a New American Security, the troop reductions Obama announced would bring a savings of about $7 billion in fiscal year 2012.
Obama announces Afghanistan troop withdrawal plan - CNN.com

 

[Dance]

ISLAMABAD:
Pakistan has ‘serious concerns’ on certain issues concerning US plans for the future of Afghanistan following President Barack Obama’s announcement of a phased withdrawal of 33,000 troops by September 2012.

While Kabul and major world capitals welcomed Obama’s decision, Islamabad offered a guarded response and stopped short of giving any explicit statement.

Instead, the foreign ministry said in a terse statement that Pakistan has “ongoing engagement on issues of peace and reconciliation in Afghanistan and counter-terrorism”.

“We will have the opportunity to discuss these issues in greater detail when the core group of Pakistan, Afghanistan and the US will meet in Kabul early next week,” the statement added.

However, a foreign ministry official admitted that Islamabad has certain reservations about the US plans for the Afghan endgame.
“We are cautious because we want to know more about President Obama’s plans,” the official told The Express Tribune on the condition of anonymity.

The official said the US president’s deflection of blame for the insurgency in neighbouring Afghanistan on Pakistan did not reflect the facts on the ground. Pakistan is also sore about Washington’s attempts to sideline it in its peace overtures with the Afghan Taliban, he said.
At a joint news conference with visiting British Foreign Secretary William Hague, Minister of State for Foreign Affairs Hina Rabbani Khar also sounded sceptical about the role of the US in the Afghan reconciliation process.

“If we are able to get more clarity in our approach and work together then certainly peace would become a reality,” said Khar.

For his part, Hague urged Pakistan to play a constructive role for the success of reconciliatory efforts in Afghanistan as he acknowledged his country was involved in the peace talks with the Taliban.

“Contacts do take place but this is an Afghan-led process and Britain will assist and facilitate. Britain is connected to those events but I don’t want to say any more than that. Any such contacts in any case are at a very preliminary stage,” Hague told reporters at a joint news conference with Minister of State for Foreign Affairs Hina Rabbani Khar.
Welcoming Obama’s drawdown plan, the British foreign secretary said that his country too would pull out all its combat troops from Afghanistan by 2015. However, Hague said that even after the American withdrawal, there would still be approximately 100,000 international troops based in Afghanistan.

“There is clearly an improved atmosphere in relations and cooperation between the two countries,” he said, acknowledging that Pakistan has an important and responsible role to play in Kabul.
Five components of strategic dialogue
Khar said that five areas had been identified as components of the enhanced strategic dialogue between the two countries and Pakistan would share working papers with the UK in moving forward on each one of them.

She said the two sides had agreed to enlarge the role of the British-Pakistan Foundation formally launched in October last year.

US military warns of risks

The US military warned on Thursday that Obama’s faster-than-expected drawdown in Afghanistan created new risks.

Admiral Mike Mullen, chairman of the US military’s Joint Chiefs of Staff, acknowledged that Obama’s plans to withdraw nearly a third of the some 99,000 US troops in Afghanistan was a riskier plan than he had initially wanted. (With additional input from the news wires)

Afghan endgame: Pakistan prefers to watch and wait on US drawdown – The Express Tribune

 

[muse]

Perhaps the Title says everything a critical readership will need - Pakistan seeks in the words of Ms. Khar to "work together" - this suggests that it is not working together with the US because the US does not need the offices Pakistan may provide - similarly UK as well do not need such offices, consider "Hague urged Pakistan to play a constructive role for the success of reconciliatory efforts in Afghanistan as he acknowledged his country was involved in the peace talks with the Taliban". The constructive role referred to is in the words of the article to "watch and wait" - till called upon, don't call us, we'll call you. --- The renewed pressure on Pakistan in the US media (read NYT) may be seen in this light.

 

[Saifullah Sani]

ISLAMABAD: As the US looks ahead to its phased withdrawal from Afghanistan, even more attention is being directed toward Pakistan, where Obama administration officials say al Qaeda and its allies are still plotting attacks against the West.

They argue that threat has been effectively neutralised in Afghanistan, a key justification for President Barack Obama’s announcement Wednesday that the US will withdraw 33,000 troops from Afghanistan by next summer. The US invaded Afghanistan in 2001 because al Qaeda used it as the base to launch the 9/11 attacks.

Afghanistan could take on new significance for the US as a base to launch unilateral strikes against militants inside neighboring Pakistan, an unstable nuclear-armed country that many analysts say is more strategically important than Afghanistan.

That future has become more likely as the relationship between Pakistan and the US has deteriorated following the American raid that killed al Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden not far from the Pakistani capital last month.

“We haven’t seen a terrorist threat emanating from Afghanistan for the past seven or eight years,” said a senior administration official in a briefing given to reporters in Washington before Obama’s speech. “The threat has come from Pakistan over the past half-dozen years or so, and longer.”

One of the most high-profile attempted attacks against the US homeland coming from Pakistan recently was by Faisal Shahzad, a Pakistani-American who tried to set off a car bomb in New York’s Times Square last year. He allegedly traveled to Pakistan’s tribal areas and coordinated his attack with the Pakistani Taliban.

Since Pakistan effectively prohibits American troops inside the country and has been a reluctant ally in targeting militants the US deems a threat, Washington has increasingly relied on covert CIA drone missile strikes to target al Qaeda and Taliban fighters holed up in Pakistan’s mountainous border region with Afghanistan.

The US refuses to acknowledge the drone program in Pakistan, but Obama alluded to its effectiveness in his speech, saying “together with the Pakistanis, we have taken out more than half of al Qaeda’s leadership.”

But the future of the drone program in Pakistan could be threatened by pervasive anti-American sentiment and anger over the US commando raid that killed bin Laden in the garrison town of Abbottabad on May 2.

The drones are extremely unpopular in Pakistan, and lawmakers took the opportunity to demand the government, which is widely believed to allow the drones to take off from bases inside the country, halt the program.

That demand found resonance with Pakistanis, nearly 70 per cent of whom view the US as an enemy despite billions of dollars in American aid, according to a recent poll conducted after the bin Laden raid by the Washington-based Pew Research Center. Only 12 percent of Pakistanis have a positive view of the US, according to the poll, which had a margin of error of plus or minus four percentage points.

If Pakistan were to prevent drones from taking off from inside the country, the US would have to launch them from Afghanistan, an act that would further increase tensions in the region, said Riffat Hussain, a defence professor at Quaid-e-Azam University in Islamabad.

“The staging area would then become Afghanistan, which would be totally anathema to Pakistan because then you are using another country’s territory for attacks against Pakistan,” Hussain said. “That will not only escalate tension between Pakistan and Afghanistan, but it means America has declared war on Pakistan.”

The US has also made it clear that if it obtains intelligence on future high-value terrorist targets inside Pakistan, it could stage special forces attacks from Afghanistan like the one that killed bin Laden.

The raid infuriated Pakistan because the government wasn’t told of it beforehand. US officials have said they kept the Pakistanis in the dark because they were worried that bin Laden would be tipped off by extremist sympathisers in the Pakistani military.

Pakistan responded to the raid by kicking out more than 100 US troops training Pakistanis in counterterrorism operations and reduced the level of intelligence cooperation — something that could make it more difficult for the US to target militants in the country.

One of the primary causes of US frustration with Pakistan is its unwillingness to target Afghan Taliban militants and their allies in the country who launch cross-border attacks against NATO troops in Afghanistan. Pakistan says its troops are stretched too thin by other operations, but many analysts believe the government is reluctant to attack groups with which it has historical ties and could be useful allies in Afghanistan after foreign forces withdraw.

Hussain, the defence professor, said the beginning of the American withdrawal from Afghanistan and Obama’s admission that the US would support reconciliation talks with the Taliban made it even less likely that Pakistan would target militants deemed a threat by Washington.

“If you are talking to the Taliban, then you can’t expect Pakistan to go after them,” Hussain said.

Obama said he would press Pakistan to tackle the militant threat inside the country, but also implied the US would not hesitate to go it alone when its security was endangered.

“For there should be no doubt that so long as I am president, the United States will never tolerate a safe-haven for those who aim to kill us,” Obama said.
With Afghan withdrawal, US focus turns to Pakistan | | DAWN.COM

 

[53fd]

This could prove very disastrous for the US. The NATO Forces are being eaten alive by terrorists from all directions, the North, West, South & East in Afghanistan. There are threats coming from North Afghanistan from provinces close to Uzbekistan; on the West, there are threats coming from the provinces next to neighboring Iran; & from a wide range of threats that have nothing to do with Pakistan. The Al-Qaeda still has a stronghold in Kunar & Nuristan provinces of Afghanistan. This could prove very costly for the US, & the region in general.

 

[KS]

Remember what happened when US left the region abruptly once in 1989-1990. The same pattern is happening once again, though time with even more disastrous consequences for both Afg and Pakistan.

 

[53fd]

Remember what happened when US left the region abruptly once in 1989-1990. The same pattern is happening once again, though time with even more disastrous consequences for both Afg and Pakistan.

How will the US use Afghanistan as a base though, & that too against Pakistan? If you remember, May 2011 was the bloodiest month for the NATO Forces (having the maximum casualties inflicted on them) since 2001. Also, Afghanistan is a landlocked country. To reach the supplies to Afghanistan, they have to send it through Russia. The US is talking about minimizing war costs right now, & using such a supply route on a permanent basis will increase the US war costs by a lot more than what it is right now, on top of the extra time used to reach the supplies.

 

[KS]

How will the US use Afghanistan as a base though, & that too against Pakistan? If you remember, May 2011 was the bloodiest month for the NATO Forces (having the maximum casualties inflicted on them) since 2001. Also, Afghanistan is a landlocked country. To reach the supplies to Afghanistan, they have to send it through Russia. The US is talking about minimizing war costs right now, & using such a supply route on a permanent basis will increase the US war costs by a lot more than what it is right now, on top of the extra time used to reach the supplies.

I am saying hell will break loose if US leaves Afghanistan (a thing many Pakistanis want) like it happened in 1990. But this time Afg alone will not suffer. It will be Pakistan that will take the maximum brunt.

 

[pakdefender]

the american intent all along has been to use afghanistan as a launching pad for attacking Pakistan.
we should make sure that they dont get a safe and easy passage out of afghanistan

 

[53fd]

I am saying hell will break loose if US leaves Afghanistan (a thing many Pakistanis want) like it happened in 1990. But this time Afg alone will not suffer. It will be Pakistan that will take the maximum brunt.

Again, how will Pakistan take the maximum brunt, when it is the NATO Forces that have suffered the maximum number of casualties in Afghanistan in May 2011 than at any time since 2001? Your blind hatred of Pakistan is really clouding your judgment of the events transpiring in the region.

 

[KS]

Again, how will Pakistan take the maximum brunt, when it is the NATO Forces that have suffered the maximum number of casualties in Afghanistan in May 2011 than at any time since 2001? Your blind hatred of Pakistan is really clouding your judgment of the events transpiring in the region.

One scenario - the Pak Taliban will be encouraged in forcing out the US that they will continue their campaign against the state of Pakistan with renewed zeal.

Call me what you want but the message stays same and I think I am sane enough to know an unstable, radicalized Pakistan is the greatest possible nightmare for India.

A golden chance came in the form of 9/11 to reset the clock to pre-Soviet jihad Afghanistan and Pakistan wherein both were moderate states and progressing well by rooting out the Islamic fundos of all shades and varieties. That chance was frittered away and time will tell what this may lead to.

 

[Hindustani]

I don't think US/NATO troops are gonna leave that easily as many pakistanis would like. Even if they do pullout all combat troops, I have a feeling the drones will stay.

 

[pakdefender]

I am saying hell will break loose if US leaves Afghanistan (a thing many Pakistanis want) like it happened in 1990. But this time Afg alone will not suffer. It will be Pakistan that will take the maximum brunt.

If the Americans leave the Indian hopes of having America take the fight to Pakistan will surely get dashed

India will be the biggest looser if the Americans leave Afghanistan , all that money that india has poured into Afghanistan will go down the drain. India will not be able to sustain it’s presence in Afghanistan without the cover of the US military.

 

[Hindustani]

If the Americans leave the Indian hopes of having America take the fight to Pakistan will surely get dashed

India will be the biggest looser if the Americans leave Afghanistan , all that money that india has poured into Afghanistan will go down the drain. India will not be able to sustain it’s presence in Afghanistan without the cover of the US military.

Says who?

 

[53fd]

One scenario - the Pak Taliban will be encouraged in forcing out the US that they will continue their campaign against the state of Pakistan with renewed zeal.

I don't think the Pakistan Administration would permit the US to have a full scale war inside the country. If there was a full scale war against the nation of Pakistan, this would spell nothing but disaster for everyone, including the US of course. The TTP might not focus their efforts against the Pakistani state then, but on fighting the US in that scenario.