New president, old conflict Source: Saudi Gazette Date: September 28 Afghanistan’s new president, Ashram Ghana, will be inaugurated today, if there are no last-minute hitches. Finance minister under President Hamid Karzai, Ghana was named president-elect on Sept. 21 though the election took place in April this year. Why this long delay? The election was marred by fraud leading to a dispute over who really won the presidential race and was only resolved by a power-sharing deal between Ghana and his rival Abdullah Abdullah who was Karzai’s foreign minister. To persuade the Afghan rivals to come to an understanding, US Secretary of State John Kerry told them how he conceded the 2004 US presidential election to his rival George Bush to avoid a political crisis. What he left unsaid was that he did not do this under a deal brokered and co-signed by a foreign power. Anyway, a protracted electoral crisis is over. We don’t know how Afghans feel about it but the US and North Atlantic Treaty Organization seems visibly relieved. This is not without reason. Within 24 hours of taking office Ashram Ghana is expected to sign legal documents allowing foreign troops to stay in Afghanistan beyond 2014. He will sign a bilateral security agreement (BSA) with the US and a “status of forces agreement” (SOFA) with NATO. This will enable about 12,000 foreign troops, including nearly 8,000 Americans, to stay on as part of a NATO-led training and advisory mission while some 1,800 Americans will conduct counter-terrorism operations. This means US will not have to withdraw all its troops by the end of Obama’s presidency. Republicans are blaming all the problems of Iraq, including the emergence of IS on Obama’s decision to “precipitately” withdraw troops from Iraq. So any deal with the Afghan government that would allow for continued stationing of US troops should come as a great relief to Obama. But what about the Afghans themselves? Some 13 years after the US invasion, conditions in Afghanistan are far from settled. There is no political stability. Dual nature of the new administration is likely to aggravate the situation. Even in periods of relative political stability, Afghanistan was not known for a robust economy. Continued war and occupation by Soviets and later by Americans and the resulting insurgency and cycle of violence have only made things worse. Despite billions invested in reconstruction since 2001, the country is dependent on donors for most of its income. Unfortunately, flows of aid are falling. If insurgency by the Taliban or other groups hampers economic activity, a stagnant economy plays into the hands of insurgents who exploit people’s discontent to swell their ranks. Obama’s drone attacks which have traumatized the Afghan countryside also help the Taliban attract new recruits. The core Taliban force is now estimated at over 60,000. Afghan police and army units are reportedly killing an average of 12 Taliban fighters a day but the frequency with which the Taliban stage attacks against foreign troops would suggest that the high death toll is having little or no effect on the group’s recruitment efforts. In one of the worst attacks on international forces in the Afghan capital in months, a suicide car bomber killed two US troops and a Polish soldier in an assault on a convoy near the US Embassy in Kabul on Sept. 16. If massive show of force by Americans can’t ensure security for the Afghans and foreigners (the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force has around 41,000 troops in Afghanistan, nearly three-quarters of them American) will reduced troop levels save them? In fact, Afghan forces suffered record casualties last year and retreated from some locations in the face of rising insurgency. For the first time, the insurgents inflicted almost as many casualties on Afghan security forces in 2013 as they suffered themselves. At least 13,700 Afghan police officers and army soldiers have been killed in the war with more than 16,500 others wounded, according to a statement issued by President Hamid Karzai’s office on March 2. White House says continued presence of foreign troops is necessary to consolidate the gains already achieved by US and its allies. But a new American intelligence assessment predicts that these gains are likely to have been significantly eroded by 2017. This means foreign troops will have to be based in Afghanistan on a permanent basis. Maybe, bilateral security agreement is the extension of occupation by other means.
Posted on: Mon, 29 Sep 2014 07:38:23 +0000
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