Karzai demand on raids snags US
pact By Gareth Porter and Shah
Nouri
WASHINGTON/KABUL - Nearly a year
after the Barack Obama administration began
negotiations with the government of Afghan
President Hamid Karzai on a United States military
presence in Afghanistan beyond 2014, both sides
confirmed last week that the talks were still hung
up over the Afghan demand that night raids by US
Special Operations Forces (SOF) either be ended or
put under Afghan control.
Karzai has
proposed the latter option, with Afghan forces
carrying out most of the raids, but the US
military has rejected that possibility, according
to sources at the US Central Command in Tampa,
Florida.
Karzai's persistence in pressing
that demand reflects the widespread popular anger
at night raids, which means that Karzai
cannot give in to the US
insistence on continuing them without handing the
Taliban a big advantage in the political-military
maneuvering that will continue during peace talks.
The dilemma for both the United States and
Karzai is that the United States has been planning
to leave SOF units and US airpower - the two
intensely unpopular elements of US-North Atlantic
Treaty Organization presence in the country - as
the only combat forces in Afghanistan beyond 2014.
In an interview with the Wall Street
Journal on Wednesday, Karzai gave no evidence of
backing down on his demand regarding night raids
and the closely related issue of US troops taking
and holding Afghan prisoners. Karzai identified
the issues involving "Afghan sovereignty" as
"civilian casualties, attacks on Afghan homes,
raids on Afghan homes, taking prisoners and
keeping prisoners".
Karzai warned there
could be no "partnership" agreement with the
United States until those issues were resolved.
United States Defense Secretary Leon
Panetta had confirmed that fact in congressional
testimony on Tuesday, admitting that US and Afghan
negotiators "still have difficulties" with the
issues of night raids and the transfer of US-run
detention facility to the Afghan government.
Panetta said he was hopeful the two sides
would work out a compromise on those issues in the
coming weeks.
In his speech to a loya
jirga, or grand assembly of leaders from
around the country, which he convened last
November, Karzai said he would insist on "an end
to night raids and to the detention of our
countrymen" by the US as conditions for a
"partnership".
The jirga, which was
generally considered to be packed with supporters
of Karzai, approved those two conditions and
called for US troops who committed crimes to be
held accountable in Afghan courts.
But
Karzai has been warned by advisers that he cannot
continue to insist on an end to night raids. He
has little hope of surviving without a continued
US military presence and large-scale assistance.
And Panetta suggested last week that the Obama
administration wanted to end the US combat role
even before 2014, further weakening Karzai's
bargaining hand with Washington.
In
interviews with Inter Press Service (IPS), people
close to the Karzai administration said they had
advised Karzai that he must give in to the US on
the issue.
"We need [the US] support and
presence in Afghanistan," said one unofficial
adviser, "so Karzai should relent on the night
raids issue."
Instead of demanding an end
to targeted raids, the adviser said, Karzai should
propose that the US train Afghan forces to carry
out such operations.
In fact, Afghan
Interior Minister Bismillah Khan Mohammadi
revealed during a visit to Ghazni province in
mid-January that Karzai had proposed that the US
turn over most targeted raids to Afghan forces,
but that US units would be allowed to carry them
out, in cooperation with Afghan forces, in certain
"urgent" circumstances.
But officials at
the US Central Command have vetoed ending the
raids or putting them under Afghan control,
according to a military source close to those
officials.
"They're not going to give them
up," the source said. "This is the last offensive
tactic we will have available," he added, "and the
Taliban have yet to put anything on the table that
would justify giving it up."
Officials of
the International Security Assistance Force
(ISAF), the US-NATO military command in
Afghanistan, claim to have responded to the Karzai
government's concerns by including Afghan units in
nearly all of them. Last December, the spokesman
for ISAF, German Brigadier General Carsten
Jacobson, said, "Ninety-five percent of all night
operations at this stage are already partnered."
But Afghan officials complain that the
Afghan forces are merely brought along on raids
that are still based completely on US targeting,
planning and execution. The Afghan troops are not
even told what the target will be before being
taken along, the Afghan officials complain.
If Karzai does finally give in to US
insistence on the freedom of action for SOF units
in Afghanistan, Afghans expect the night raids
issue to play a key role in eventual negotiations
on ending the war. One unofficial adviser told IPS
that the Taliban would definitely demand an end to
such raids, and said Karzai might support that
demand in return for an end to Taliban suicide
bombings, planting of mines and agreement to
renounce al-Qaeda.
Meanwhile, popular
Afghan anger at US night raids has continued to
grow as the pace of those raids has risen steeply
in recent years, and thousands of families still
suffer the consequences of long-term detention
because of the raids.
Haji-Niaz Akka, 48,
a shopkeeper in Kandahar city, told IPS about a
raid at 2 am on his home almost eight months ago
in which US forces tied up all four males in the
house and took them away. Two of them were
released two days later, but the other two, his
nephew and son-in-law, were taken to Bagram air
base near Kabul and remain in detention.
"These night raids violate our customs,"
Akka said, expressing a common Afghan view. "It's
better to be killed than to be searched at night
while sleeping with [one's] wife and kids. This is
absolutely unacceptable."
Zahir Jan Ustad,
a resident of Kandahar's Panjwai district, is
still angry about two of his brothers being
detained in two separate night raids in Kandahar
city and in Panjwai last September.
"We
don't know why the Americans are disturbing us by
night raids which we hate," he told IPS in an
interview. "They are coming at night and searching
our women. Our women are our honor, and we really
hate [the US] for that," Ustad said.
The
Afghan anger at night raids is also a major factor
in the antagonism felt by Afghan army officers and
soldiers as well as police toward foreign troops
that has resulted in 40 attacks by Afghan security
personnel on US troops since 2007, three-fourths
of them in the past two years. Nearly 100 US and
NATO personnel have been killed or wounded in such
attacks.
A study done for the US military
by behavioral scientist Jeffrey Bordin in late
2010 and early 2011 revealed that night raids and
house searches were mentioned more frequently than
any other issue by Afghan troops as a reason for
serous altercations with US forces.
The
study, originally unclassified but classified by
the ISAF in the latter half of 2011, showed that
more than one-third of the groups of participating
Afghan security personnel in 19 locations in three
eastern provinces had recounted instances of
serious altercations with US troops over US night
raids and house searches.
The study
reported that many Afghan troops and police
expressed the view that US troops, who they regard
as "infidels", should never enter an Afghan's
home. Most of the Afghan security personnel
participating in the study expressed the view that
any raids on homes should be led by Afghan police
in the presence of local community leaders.
Gareth Porter is an
investigative historian and journalist
specializing in US national security policy. The
paperback edition of his book, Perils of
Dominance: Imbalance of Power and the Road to War
in Vietnam, was published in 2006.
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