Karzai security pact gambit aimed at keeping US money filling his pockets

By Jim Miklaszewski, Chief Pentagon Correspondent, NBC News

Afghan Presidency via Reuters

Afghan President Hamid Karzai, left, meets with U.S. National Security Adviser Susan Rice in Kabul on Nov. 25.

Behind a seemingly never-ending game of brinkmanship with the United States over a bilateral security agreement, Afghan President Hamid Karzai has a simple goal, according to U.S. military officials: Ensure that billions of dollars in aid from Washington continues to flow to feed the cycle of corruption that keeps him in power.

ANALYSIS

“It’s all about the money,” said one senior U.S. official, who like the others spoke with NBC News on condition of anonymity. 

The poker game over an estimated $4 billion to $6 billion a year in U.S. and NATO aid that would be expected to continue to flow into the country if a new agreement is signed is playing out on the stage of international diplomacy, but U.S. officials say financial considerations are driving Karzai’s negotiating tactics. Those considerations reportedly include bags of cash he collects from the CIA.

It took well over a year for the United States and Afghanistan to hammer out the bilateral security agreement approved last weekend by the Loya Jirga, an assembly of Afghan elders.

But Karzai promptly raised the stakes again this week, telling National Security Adviser Susan Rice that he would not sign the bilateral security agreement with the U.S. unless the Obama administration agrees to a new set of last-minute demands:  That it take a role in peace talks with the Taliban and release 17 Afghans held at the Guantanamo Bay detention center.  

The White House pushed back, with Rice essentially telling Karzai to sign the agreement by the end of December, or the U.S. would pick up its troops -- along with the billions in future financial aid  -- and go home by the end of 2014. 

The second part of that threat undoubtedly got Karzai’s attention, U.S. officials say, because the U.S. aid is crucial to his future as Afghanistan heads toward a presidential election on April 5, 2014 – a campaign for which Karzai is not eligible due to term limits.

The Afghan government and large segments of society have become heavily dependent on U.S. aid over the past 12 years. But corruption is rampant in Kabul and U.S. officials believe it can never be eliminated.

“It’s a cost of doing business in Afghanistan at every level,” said one official.

Keep reading at investigations >>

Karzai: Obama Administration Said Taliban 'Not Our Enemies'

breitbart

By William Bigelow 

Afghan President Hamid Karzai says before he signs a Bilateral Security Agreement with the United States, he has two demands: that “the Americans should stop attacks against Afghan homes” and that there be “peace in Afghanistan.” In an interview tih RFE/RL's Akbar Ayazi, Karzai said:

I have demanded an end to all American attacks against Afghan homes and the beginning of a realistic peace process. Whenever the Americans meet these two demands of mine, I am ready to sign the agreement. And when these two demands are implemented, this agreement is in Afghanistan's interests.

Asked whether Susan Rice, the U.S. national security adviser, told him the U.S. would stay out of the Afghan elections coming up in April, Karzai responded that he had talked to her, but he wasn’t entirely trustful in the U.S. not interfering:

I briefed her about how America and other Western nations interfered in the previous presidential election, how they delayed the election, how they maligned the first round ballot. Keeping in view that experience, and as the president of Afghanistan today, it is my duty not to allow foreigners to either malign Afghanistan's next presidential election or stretch the process so that they can manipulate it. She assured me that this time there will be no interference in our election. So for now, I have her assurance. But I am watching them to see whether they interfere in the election or not. And I will talk about it then.

Karzai confirmed that the Obama Administration actually told him that the Taliban, which provided al Qaeda its base of support for September 11, was not an enemy of the U.S. He said:

Last year, during my visit to Washington, in a very important briefing a day before I met U.S. President [Barack Obama], his national security adviser Tom Donilon, and senior White House officials, generals, and intelligence officials, the national security adviser met with me. He told me: "The Taliban are not our enemies and we don't want to fight them."

Afghan President Karzai Wants More CIA Money

War News Updates

The Afghan leader Hamid Karzai told reporters Saturday that money delivered by the C.I.A. was “an easy source of petty cash.” Mohammad Ismail/Reuters 

Karzai Says He Was Assured C.I.A. Would Continue Delivering Bags of Cash -- New York Times

KABUL, Afghanistan — The C.I.A.’s station chief here met with President Hamid Karzai on Saturday, and the Afghan leader said he had been assured the agency would continue dropping off stacks of cash at his office despite a storm of criticism that has erupted since the payments were disclosed.

The C.I.A. money, Mr. Karzai told reporters, was “an easy source of petty cash,” and he suggested that some of it was used to pay off warlords and power brokers.

The use of the C.I.A. cash to pay those people has prompted criticism from many Afghans and some American and European officials who complain that the agency, in its quest to maintain access and influence at the presidential palace, financed what is essentially a presidential slush fund. The practice, the officials say, effectively undercut a pillar of the American war strategy: the building of a clean and credible Afghan government.

Read more >>

CIA 'Ghost Cash' Effect: Is US main source of Afghan corruption?

RussiaToday

Karzai accuses U.S. and Taliban of conspiring to keep troops in Afghanistan

worldnews

Erin A. Kirk-Cuomo / Dept. of Defense via AFP - Getty Images

U.S. Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel speaks with Afghan president Hamid Karzai during a private meeting in Kabul.

By Mirwais Harooni and Phil Stewart, Reuters

KABUL —Afghan President Hamid Karzai ratcheted up his criticism of the United States on Sunday, marring a debut visit by the new U.S. defense secretary, Chuck Hagel, and highlighting tensions that could undermine Washington's strategy to wind down the unpopular war.

A day after two Taliban bombings killed 17 people, Karzai accused the United States and the Taliban of colluding to convince Afghans that foreign forces were needed beyond 2014, when NATO is set to wrap up its combat mission and most troops withdraw.

"Those bombs that went off in Kabul and Khost were not a show of force to America. They were in service of America. It was in the service of the 2014 slogan to warn us if they (Americans) are not here then Taliban will come," Karzai said in a speech.

"In fact those bombs, set off yesterday in the name of the Taliban, were in the service of Americans to keep foreigners longer in Afghanistan."

It was one of several inflammatory comments by Karzai and his government on Sunday and follow weeks of efforts by the Afghan leader to curtail U.S. military activity in Afghanistan, including a call to kick American special forces out of an important province. U.S. commanders see special operations forces as key to the end-phase of the conflict.

U.S. Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel responds to Afghan President Hamid Karzai's statements in which Karzai accused the U.S. and Taliban with working together.

Hours after Karzai's speech, Hagel said he spoke "clearly and directly" about the comments during his first meeting with the Afghan leader since becoming U.S. defense secretary on February 27.

Hagel appeared at pains to be respectful of Karzai and avoid sharp criticism, but he told reporters that any collusion between the U.S. and the Taliban "wouldn't make a lot of sense."

The U.S. and NATO commander in Afghanistan, General Joseph Dunford, was more categorical.

"We have fought too hard over the past 12 years, we have shed too much blood over the past 12 years, we have done too much to help the Afghan security forces grow over the last 12 years to ever think that violence or instability would be to our advantage," Dunford told reporters travelling with Hagel.

Of Karzai's remarks, he added: "I'll let others judge whether that's particularly helpful or not at the political level."

Still, politics will be key over the next several months, as the United States and NATO allies work to carry out their strategy of pulling out their troops and decide how large a residual force to leave behind after 2014.

NATO defense chiefs meeting in Brussels last month discussed keeping a combined U.S. and allied force of 8,000-12,000 in Afghanistan, focusing on training Afghan troops and countering the remnants of al Qaeda, the Pentagon has said.

Any deal for a follow-on force, which Washington says must include immunity for U.S. troops, would need Karzai's blessing.

Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

ABUSING STUDENTS? TALIBAN TALKS?

Karzai has a history of making incendiary statements that exasperate Washington but the nature and awkward timing of his latest remarks about the United States were exceptional.

He also alleged on Sunday that the Taliban and the United States had been holding talks in the Gulf Arab state of Qatar on a "daily basis," further fuelling his suggestion that Washington and the militants were working at common purposes.

"I told the president that it was not true," Hagel said. "The fact is any prospect for peace or political settlements - that has to be led by the Afghans."

The Taliban spokesman in Afghanistan, Zabihullah Mujahid, denied that negotiations with the United States had resumed.

Karzai's government also alleged that U.S.-led forces and Afghans working with them were abusing and arresting university students. Karzai issued an executive order banning foreign troops from entering all education institutions.

Hagel and Karzai were meant to have appeared together at a joint news conference on Sunday evening. But, in a reminder of the threats posed by the resilient insurgency, U.S. officials said it was canceled because of security concerns.

Hagel was about a kilometer away and within earshot of a Saturday morning suicide attack outside the defense ministry that killed nine people. He was meant to have met his Afghan counterpart there this weekend but the venue was later changed.

Hagel's visit coincided with the passing of a deadline imposed by Karzai for U.S. special forces to leave Wardak province accusing them of overseeing torture and killings.

U.S. forces have denied involvement in any abuses.

Hagel has sounded hopeful that a deal could be reached on their continued deployment but acknowledged no breakthroughs were made in his talks with Karzai.

It was unclear how Hagel's trip would be viewed by U.S. Republicans who bitterly fought his nomination to become defense chief, portraying him as soft on Iran and questioning his judgment.

Hagel at times appeared sympathetic to the stresses of political life that Karzai must endure.

"I know these are difficult issues for President Karzai and the Afghan people. And I was once a politician," Hagel said. "So I can understand the kind of pressures - especially leaders of countries - are always under." 

US-Afghanistan: First time tragedy, second time farce

foreignpolicy

By Kori Schake

It is striking how closely the Obama administration is following the Iraq withdrawal playbook in Afghanistan. There are numerous and important differences between Iraq and Afghanistan, but President Obama is making the exact same policy choices to "wind down" the war in Afghanistan that he made in Iraq. And in both cases, it amounts to writing off the war.

The Obama administration hasn't had a strategy in either war, it has had a military strategy. In both cases, that military strategy produced military gains; in both cases those military gains were ephemeral because advances were in no way supported by political or economic lines of operations to consolidate and capitalize on our military success. The State Department's grand plans for the transition to civilian activity in Iraq are in ashes. If there was a "civilian surge" in Afghanistan, it was completely ineffectual.

In both cases President Obama had a political strategy grounded in the belief that leaders in those countries would not make the politically difficult choices needed unless faced with the imminent end of our support. Thus the timeline-driven exit in both cases. In Iraq, it resulted in a mad scramble for political control: the stalemate over Parliamentary elections, Prime Minister Maliki using the apparatus of the state to punish political adversaries. That mad scramble has been underway in Afghanistan and the region since President Obama announced in December 2009 our withdrawal from Afghanistan, and most evident in the hedging choices of the government of Pakistan, without whose collaboration our strategy could not succeed.

In both cases President Obama doubted the efficacy of a surge of troops: on Iraq he insisted the surge couldn't work, on Afghanistan he set a time limit and reportedly told military commanders this was all they were getting. If they couldn't produce a victory in that time, he would wind down our involvement.

In both cases, President Obama publicly declaring our withdrawal created a political dynamic in which leaders had strong incentives to make us look pushed out; otherwise they would look abandoned, weakening them domestically. Thus Maliki's resistance to immunity for American soldiers; thus Karzai's cavalcade of anti-American statements and actions. Their resistance feeds into the president's belief that they are undeserving of our sacrifices, and best left to their own fates instead of coached and set up to be successful. President Karzai said after meeting President Obama that "numbers [of American troops] aren't going to make a difference in Afghanistan." Expect President Obama to give that theory a test.

In both cases, our exit bore no connection to achievement of our objectives. In Iraq the timeline was supposed to allow for a stable political transition. Manipulation by Maliki of the outcome of spring 2010 Parliamentary elections seized up politics in Iraq for a year and a half while our drawdown proceeded apace and Generals Odierno and Austin disavowed any connection between our withdrawal and political fracture. In Afghanistan, the Obama administration has trumpeted building security forces that can undertake the crucial work Americans have been doing. The December 2012 Pentagon report on Afghan security forces concluded that only 1 of 23 Afghan brigades can operate without our support. If achieving our objectives mattered to President Obama, that information should prompt a serious review of our timeline -- and extend it. Instead, he has accelerated our disengagement.

In both cases, the military advised more troops, more time, and broader objectives than the president accepted. It is the job of military leaders to provide the president their best military advice -- but warfare is a political undertaking, and the military cannot be expected to decide how much national effort to put toward the wars we are fighting. It is above their pay grade. We elect presidents to do that, and only they truly have the span of authority to make the trade offs between defending our country and other important endeavors. But that means blame for the outcome also belongs with the president and not the military leaders.

In both cases, President Obama instituted an end to military operations more than a year before the withdrawal of our military forces. In Iraq it was the August 2009 "end of combat operations;" on Friday, President Obama announced U.S. forces in Afghanistan would this spring limit themselves to supporting Afghan operations; by 2014 they will be limited to training Afghan forces. This effectively ends the practice of counterinsurgency. We will no longer protect Afghans, be dispersed throughout the country, or operate alongside Afghan military units. We're shrinking back onto a couple of large military bases that will protect us against attack ... and also against having an accurate intelligence picture to fuel those counterterrorist operations.

In both cases, President Obama has carried out the policies in slow motion, allowing months of news coverage about pending changes and options considered, such that when policies are implemented, they don't seem like news. Opponents have a harder time mobilizing support when there isn't an actual policy to counter, and by the time there is a policy, the public feels like they've heard this all before. It's the frog boiling strategy: make it happen slowly enough that we'll hardly notice.

Executing the Iraq playbook in Afghanistan will replicate the squandered Iraq gains in the war President Obama argued needed to be fought because he was "convinced that our security is at stake in Afghanistan and Pakistan" as it was not in Iraq. Does President Obama genuinely expect a different outcome? Does he no longer believe the dire stakes that prompted his Afghanistan surge are at issue? Does he believe achieving our objectives is not worth the price? Does he believe America can buffer itself against a chaotic and dangerous world? Does he believe the wars he has prosecuted as commander in chief are unwinnable? If so, why has he allowed them to exact the terrible toll of lives lost?

Obama, Karzai discuss US presence in Afghanistan

Obama, Karzai endorse 'Taliban office,' agree to speed military transition

foxnews

Foxnews

President Obama and Afghan President Hamid Karzai on Friday endorsed the opening of a "Taliban office" in a third-party country to "facilitate" reconciliation talks -- just one plank of the post-war plan the two leaders discussed during Karzai's visit to Washington. 

The two also agreed to speed up slightly the schedule for moving Afghanistan's security forces into the lead across the country, with U.S. troops shifting fully to a support role by spring rather than summer. 

The capabilities of the Afghan army are "exceeding initial expectations," the two said in a joint statement released after their private White House meeting and working lunch and in advance of a joint news conference. 

"The transition is well underway," Obama said at a joint press conference Friday. He stressed that the U.S. is still on course to bring the war "to a responsible end" by the end of 2014, handing full responsibility for security over to the Afghans by that point. 

Until then, Obama said U.S. troops will still be fighting but will, by spring, put the Afghans in the lead. 

"The nature of our work will be different, we will be in a training, assisting advising role," Obama said, adding U.S. troops will still be in "harm's way." 

While the two sides work out the specifics of the U.S. troop drawdown -- and how many troops, if any, might remain after 2014 -- Obama and Karzai also formally endorsed the opening of a "Taliban office" in Qatar. 

Obama said the purpose would be to facilitate talks between the Afghan government and the Taliban. 

Obama nevertheless said that the Taliban have been driven out of their strongholds in most major cities. 

In their statement, the leaders said they discussed the possibility of a continued U.S. troop presence beyond December 2014, when the U.S. and allied combat mission is to end. But they did not settle on any specifics. Obama, asked by a reporter about what that footprint might look like, said he was still gathering recommendations from the Pentagon. 

The U.S. now has 66,000 troops in Afghanistan. 

U.S. commanders in Afghanistan have proposed keeping 6,000 to 15,000 U.S. troops after 2014 to continuing pursuing terrorists and training Afghan security forces. But the White House, which tends to favor lower troop levels than the generals do, says Obama would be open to pulling all U.S. forces out of Afghanistan at the end of 2014. 

"We wouldn't rule out any option," Ben Rhodes, Obama's deputy national security adviser, said earlier this week. "We're not guided by the goal of a certain number of U.S. troops in the country. We're guided by the objectives that the president set -- disrupt, dismantle, defeat al-Qaida." 

Friday's meeting was the first between Obama and Karzai since November's U.S. presidential election. Heading into his second term, Obama is shaking up his national security team, including key players who deal with Karzai and the war. 

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and Defense Secretary Leon Panetta are both expected to leave their posts within weeks. The president nominated Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., as the nation's top diplomat and former Sen. Chuck Hagel, R-Neb., to lead the Pentagon. 

Both Kerry and Hagel are likely to favor a more rapid withdrawal of U.S. forces. 

After Karzai met Thursday with Clinton and Panetta, the Pentagon chief offered an upbeat assessment of the war's progress. 

"After a long and difficult path, we finally are, I believe, at the last chapter of establishing an Afghanistan, a sovereign Afghanistan, that can govern and secure itself for the future," Panetta said. 

The U.S.-led NATO coalition is aiming to turn all combat missions over to Afghan forces by the end of this year. The 66,000 U.S. forces still there are already turning over territory or handing off many combat missions to the Afghans. 

Still, the war's endgame is punctuated with uncertainty, beginning with doubts about whether the Afghan government can build legitimacy by credibly serving its population. Also in question is whether Afghan security forces will be capable of holding off the Taliban after international forces leave. 

Panetta told a news conference that he and Karzai had laid the groundwork for the Afghan leader's White House meeting. 

"We made very good progress on, you know, the kind of equipment that we would try to make available to them," to enable the Afghans to not only secure their borders but also prevent a Taliban takeover, Panetta said. 

Gen. Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told the same news conference that U.S. and Afghan officials are developing a common assessment of threats Afghanistan is likely to face in the future. Conclusions from that study will help determine the full range of Afghanistan's military requirements, he said. 

Karzai was greeted at the Pentagon by a ceremonial honor guard, and at a photo-taking session in Panetta's office, the Afghan leader said he could assure the American people that his country "will not ever again be threatened by terrorists from across our borders" -- an allusion to the al-Qaida leaders hiding in Pakistan. It was from Afghanistan that Osama bin Laden and his al-Qaida operatives plotted the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the United States. 

Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2013/01/11/obama-and-afghan-president-karzai-to-meet-to-discuss-ending-war/?test=latestnews#ixzz2HhHF8Yvn

EE.UU. considera la posibilidad de retirar todas las tropas de Afganistán

Karzai: US, NATO behind ’insecurity’ in Afghanistan

Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Read >>

Also 

Analysis: How Afghanistan
has changed under Karzai

Karzai: Afghanistan, US in Contacts With Taliban

NATO investigates killing of Karzai’s cousin

The Canadian Press

KANDAHAR, AFGHANISTAN—NATO launched an investigation Thursday after a cousin of Afghan President Hamid Karzai was shot to death by troops during a nighttime raid in a Kandahar district under Canadian command.
Regional Command South, which oversees NATO operations in southern Afghanistan, initiated the probe after Yar Muhammad Karzai, 63, was fatally shot in the village of Karz in Dand, a district south of Kandahar city.

More

NATO investigates killing of Karzai’s cousin

Karzai Rejects U.S. Apology for Deaths of 9 Boys

By ALISSA J. RUBIN

President Hamid Karzai said that General David H. Petraeus’s apology for the killings was insufficient.

What this corrupt guy is looking for?

More Karzai Rejects U.S. Apology for Deaths of 9 Boys

The road out of Afghanistan runs through two presidents who just don't get along.

BY AHMED RASHID

A few weeks before the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, an exiled Afghan leader I had known for nearly 20 years paid a visit to my home in Lahore. His name was Hamid Karzai, and his problem, he told me, was that he was rapidly losing faith in the West's concern for his country.

Karzai was the scion of a prominent Pashtun family in southern Afghanistan, one with a deep-rooted enmity for the Taliban regime. The Taliban, which had ruled the country since 1996, had gunned down Karzai's father in front of a mosque in the Pakistani city of Quetta two years earlier. Now the younger Karzai was clandestinely sending money and weapons across the Afghan border for an eventual uprising against the ruling regime. But he had just been served notice by Pakistan's all-powerful Inter-Services Intelligence directorate (ISI) that his visa had been revoked -- the Taliban, with its close links to the Pakistani intelligence agency, had urged the ISI to get rid of him. Karzai was making the rounds of Western embassies in Islamabad to ask whether anyone would support him if he went inside the country and raised the standard of rebellion. But nobody offered to help. Several ambassadors refused to see him.

Full story

How Obama Lost Karzai