Kerry-Karzai marathon talks on Bilateral Security Agreement (BSA), also known as Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA), fizzled out after raising high hopes a day earlier. Americans want to extract maximum concessions from the outgoing Afghan president. Afghanistan side is careful, and thus is in no hurry. “I believe Karzai wants the BSA, but he doesn’t want to take responsibility for it,” says Shah Mahmood Miakhel, Afghanistan country director for the ‘US Institute of Peace’, a Washington think tank. “Karzai would like to protect himself both ways.” The US wants the security deal signed by October 31 to enable the NATO military coalition to plan its withdrawal of 87,000 combat troops from Afghanistan by December 2014.
In the meanwhile Mullah Omar has rejected the proposed pact and said Afghans will not accept it. His statement came a day after Messrs Karzai and Kerry agreed on some parts of the BSA. “The invaders and their allies should understand that the strategic agreement will be accompanied by grave consequences for them,” said Omar on Sunday. “Their decisions are not acceptable. The invaders should know that their limited bases will never be accepted. The current armed Jihad will continue against them with more momentum…The Afghan people can’t be enticed by the (current) conspiracy of misleading people under the name of elections in the shade of the occupation in the country…Therefore, the Islamic Emirate rejects these elections and urge the people to avoid participation in them,” the Taliban Supremo said. A credible election to choose Karzai’s successor next year is seen as the key test of Afghan stability as NATO troops withdraw, and Kerry stressed the US would support a free and fair vote.
Karzai is certainly between the devil and the deep blue sea. The bilateral security agreement between Kabul and Washington is threatened by disputes between Afghan and US officials, and there are fears that the agreement will be derailed if the issues are not resolved.
The US Defence Secretary Chuck Hagel described the pact as critically important. “I hope we’ll have that agreement by the end of October, because we just can’t move without it,” Hagel said. However, Karzai is not rushing into signing the pact, and it may not be finalised until after his successor is chosen in April elections. If signed by the current president, he will be definitely held accountable in the history of Afghanistan. The collapse of a similar pact with Iraq in 2011 led to the US pulling all its troops out of the country. Such replication cannot be ruled out in case of Afghanistan as well.
While addressing the US troops in South Korea during his 30 September visit, Hagel highlighted few key points about Afghan conflict: the United States will not commit troops to a follow-on operation in Afghanistan without a security agreement; decisions on force levels to remain in the theatre would be made after that pact; US officials are working towards securing a SOFA with the Afghan government by the end of October that could shape the size and construct of NATO’s post-2014 mission in Afghanistan; and the US president would make a decision on size and role/task of residual garrison after signing of SOFA.
The US has set the end of this month as its artificial deadline for signing a SOFA with Afghanistan. The driving force behind this push is to have the SOFA in place, far ahead of the end of next year to prevent a repeat of embarrassment that the US suffered when it was unable to get the terms it wanted–specifically, full criminal immunity for US troops–in Iraq and wound up withdrawing all troops instead of leaving a force behind after the stated end of military operations. The news out of Afghanistan does not bode well for the US to meet its deadline. Issue of criminal immunity is just as big a barrier in Afghanistan as it was in Iraq.
Karzai has long opposed unilateral operations in Afghanistan by US special operations forces and the CIA, particularly when they run the risk of causing civilian casualties. Afghan side strongly relates it their sovereignty. They consider it something that will definitely undermine the sovereignty if they allow the US forces to have the right to conduct unilateral military operations. In February 2013, Karzai got frustrated with the death squad activities in Wardak province and called for the expulsion of US Special Forces from there. Reference to special operations forces and the CIA actually means the death squads that the US organizes in Afghanistan, sometimes under the guise of Afghan police. These squads carry out brutal night raids described as “counter-terrorism” operations.
The second sticking point is also fairly interesting. It appears that in this case, the US is actually showing restraint, and rightly so, since they don’t want to give Afghanistan wide latitude in determining what constitutes an attack on Afghanistan that could trigger the US response in defence of Afghanistan. Cross-border skirmishes between various factions in Afghanistan and Pakistan is a frequent activity. Recently there was a suicide bombing at the Chaman border crossing that killed at least eight people. Attacker appeared to have come from the Afghan side of the border; the US wishes to avoid being forced to carry out attacks inside Pakistan under the guise of the SOFA when a suicide attack originates from inside Pakistan.
While there is already a long term strategic partnership agreement in place governing US Afghan relationships from 2014 to 2024, the role and number of troops to remain in Afghanistan was left to be negotiated separately. The US demands that the residual troops be immune from Afghan law. Karzai so far has not agreed to that and has said that he will leave the matter to a loya jirga which may be quite unwilling to grant such immunity.
It’s unlikely that either side will give up any portion of their position; hence the “deadline” is likely to be extended. There is a discussion that the new Afghan president taking office after the April elections will be tasked with finalizing the agreement since both sides seem unable to come to agreement. Pakistan needs to carefully monitor the terms of reference and raise its voice, well in advance, if any thing appears cooking up that could impinge upon Pakistan’s security.
