US AND Afghan officials reached an agreement on the transfer of prisoners from US to Afghan custody yesterday, after a video-conference between presidents Barack Obama and Hamid Karzai.
But at a time of increasing tension, serious obstacles remain to the conclusion of a status-of-forces agreement regarding up to 20,000 US forces to remain in Afghanistan after Nato’s mission ends in 2014.
The US wants a memorandum of understanding before the Nato summit in Chicago on May 20th and 21st.
Recent events, including the murder of six US soldiers by Afghan soldiers between February 23rd and March 1st, in the wake of the burning of an unspecified number of Korans by US forces at Bagram Air Base, have led some US officials to question the utility of staying on in Afghanistan.
According to a classified report in mid-January, ever greater numbers of US and coalition troops are being killed by the Afghans they are training.
After two Americans were shot dead inside the interior ministry in Kabul on February 25th, Nato began pulling advisers out of government ministries.
President Nicolas Sarkozy announced on January 27th that French combat troops will leave Afghanistan by the end of 2013, a year earlier than previously planned. A week earlier, a gunman in Afghan army fatigues had killed four French soldiers.
Five days after Mr Sarkozy’s announcement, US secretary of defence Leon Panetta said US forces would cease their combat role as early as the middle of 2013.
Marine Gen James Mattis, the head of US Central Command, gave scant comfort to worried lawmakers in a senate hearing this week: “Treachery has existed as long as there’s been warfare, and there’s always been a few people that you couldn’t trust.”
A police guard who had been trained by US Special Operations Forces allowed Taliban insurgents to enter an Afghan police station in Oruzgan Province one night this week, the New York Times reported yesterday. The insurgents killed nine policemen while they slept.
Two main issues have prevented the conclusion of a status of forces agreement.
Mr Karzai had set yesterday as a deadline for the handover of 3,000 Afghan prisoners held at Parwan, adjacent to Bagram.
Under the new agreement, the transfer will take six months and the US will be able to block the release of detainees.
Mr Karzai also insists that Nato stop night-time raids on suspected insurgents.
Senator Lindsey Graham, an influential Republican who was until now a strong supporter of the war in Afghanistan, said Mr Karzai’s intransigence made him think the US should just pack up and leave.
“If the president of the country can’t understand how irrational it is to expect us to turn over prisoners, and if he doesn’t understand that the night raids have been the biggest blow to the Taliban . . . then there is no hope of winning. None,” Sen Graham told the Washington Post.
If Mr Karzai did not change his position “that means we will fail in Afghanistan and that means Lindsey Graham pulls the plug,” said the senator, who met with Mr Karzai in Kabul last month.
Republican presidential hopefuls criticised Mr Obama for apologising for the Koran burnings that led to rioting in which some 30 Afghans died.
But as the war becomes more unpopular, and conservative commentators too ask why the US is supporting an ungrateful and recalcitrant ally, the front-runner Mitt Romney has stopped demanding that US forces stay on indefinitely in Afghanistan.
America’s Afghan fatigue is fed by continuing reports of what the New York Times called “intractable graft” in a front-page headline this week.
In one example, Sherkhan Farnood, the founder and former chairman of Kabul Bank, and his former partner Khalilullah Frozi, are reported to be living in luxury in Kabul.
Both men were arrested last June at the insistence of US authorities, who accused them of spending hundreds of millions of dollars of the bank’s funds for personal use, some of which used to create shell companies that skimmed money from US development contracts.
The Afghan government – and ultimately the US taxpayer – spent $900 million to keep Kabul Bank afloat.
In another example, the US has given up pursuing the Afghan army’s former surgeon general, Gen Ahmad Zia Yaftali, after Mr Karzai intervened on his behalf.
Gen Yaftali was accused of stealing tens of millions of dollars worth of drugs from Afghanistan’s main military hospital, which is financed by the US.
The US military and the Drug Enforcement Administration are conducting separate investigations into the trafficking of illicit drugs and weapons by the Afghan Air Force.
In April 2011, Col Ahmed Gul, who was in charge of cargo movement for the Afghan Air Force, shot eight US Air Force officers at Kabul airport before taking his own life.
One of Col Gul’s victims was US Lieut Col Frank Bryant, an adviser who explained to a colleague, cited by the Wall Street Journal, that he was tired of watching “helicopters just disappearing without flight plans”.
