Karzai Accuses U.S. of Taliban Collusion as Hagel Visits

Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel was greeted on his first visit to Afghanistan since taking office by suicide bombs, threats and Afghan President Hamid Karzai’s accusation that the U.S. is colluding with the Taliban.

As Hagel prepared to leave a U.S. military compound in Kabul on March 9, a Taliban suicide bomber blew himself up outside the Ministry of Defense, and another suicide bomb detonated in Khost province. Yesterday, Karzai said that those attacks, which together killed 19 people, aided U.S. goals. A joint Hagel-Karzai press conference at the presidential palace was canceled for what Pentagon officials said were security reasons.

While the Taliban said the attacks were aimed at sending a message to Hagel that the insurgents remain a powerful force, Karzai said in a speech yesterday that the U.S. is holding peace talks with the radical Islamists and the bombs were in the “service of America.”

“On the surface and to this outside observer, it appears that Karzai has gone way off the reservation, perhaps more so than he has in the past,” said David Maxwell, a retired U.S. Army colonel who’s associate director of the Center for Security Studies at Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service. “I cannot see how we could work with such an apparently delusional leader much longer, but unfortunately I do not know if we have any other good options.”

Obstacles Faced

Karzai’s allegations and the suicide attacks gave the new defense secretary, who took office March 1, a close-up view of the military and political obstacles the Obama administration faces as it tries to extricate the U.S. from a war it’s been waging for more than 11 years at a cost of 2,170 American lives so far. At the same time, the U.S. must help train Afghan forces to take over the fight, root out official corruption, curb opium trafficking, and develop the Afghan economy.

As Hagel headed back to Washington today, two U.S. soldiers in eastern Afghanistan were shot dead by an Afghan police officer wielding a machine gun on a base in Wardak province, in the latest in a wave of such insider attacks. Three Afghan policemen, including the assailant, were fatally shot by U.S. troops in response, according to Abdul Razaq Quraishi, a deputy police chief.

President Barack Obama has ordered the withdrawal of 34,000 of about 68,000 U.S. troops in Afghanistan by February. Former Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said last month that the drawdown will occur in stages, with the force dropping to 50,000 by November, after the summer fighting season, and then to 34,000 by February. More troops will come home after Afghan elections planned for early 2014, Panetta said.

‘Categorically False’

“When you spend 48 hours in Afghanistan or any part of the world that’s still dangerous, you again recognize the complications that exist every day in these parts of the world,” Hagel, a combat veteran of Vietnam, told reporters at a U.S. military base after he met with Karzai yesterday. Asked about Karzai’s accusation that the U.S. was colluding with the Taliban, Hagel said he “spoke clearly and directly” to Karzai on the matter. Hagel didn’t elaborate.

Earlier yesterday, Marine Corps General Joseph Dunford, head of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s International Security Assistance Force, said the Afghan president’s comments were “categorically false.”

‘Fought Too Hard’

“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,” Dunford told reporters. “To ever think that violence or instability would be to our advantage, that’s clearly not where we are right now.”

White House press secretary Jay Carney also said today in Washington that Karzai’s suggestion the U.S. is colluding with the Taliban “is categorically false.”

“The last thing we would do is support any kind of violence,” he told reporters.
Hagel said yesterday that he’d told Karzai “it was not true that the United States was unilaterally working with the Taliban trying to negotiate anything. The fact is any prospect for peace or political settlements, that has to be led by the Afghans. Obviously the U.S. will support efforts, if they’re led by the Afghans, to come to some possible resolution if that eventually evolves.”

Afghan Politics

Anthony Cordesman, a defense analyst with the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, said posturing by Karzai is aimed largely “at Afghan domestic politics and trying to both consolidate his own power base and shape the outcome of the spring 2014 election.”

While Karzai isn’t eligible to run again, he may seek to maintain power through a candidacy by his brother or another ally.

“Pressuring the U.S. and playing to internal constituencies is part of the game,” Cordesman said in an e- mail from Afghanistan. “It does make Karzai a growing problem, compounded by his distaste for military issues, growing pushback against the U.S. and growing tensions with Pakistan.”

In recent weeks, the U.S. and Afghanistan have disagreed about the role of U.S. special operations forces and the transfer of Afghan prisoners to Afghan control.

A planned transfer of prisoners being held by the U.S. at Bagram air base outside Kabul to Afghan control over the weekend was delayed because the two sides couldn’t agree on the terms of the handover. Karzai had said he would release some of the prisoners.

Ensuring Detention

“What I need to be satisfied as a commander is that there’s a plan in place to ensure that those people who need to be off the battlefield are in fact detained,” said Dunford, who became the top NATO military officer last month.

“We need the latitude to finish the work here in the next 22 months,” he said.

Friction has increased between the two counties because Afghans are increasingly assuming responsibility for running their country and are asserting authority, Dunford said.

“We’re balancing increased Afghan sovereignty with continued presence of coalition forces who exercise a piece of that sovereignty because we are in the middle of a conflict,” Dunford said.

Expelling Commandos

Karzai issued an order last month expelling U.S. commandos from Wardak province, near Kabul, alleging that the soldiers were involved in atrocities. Dunford said the two sides were discussing that order to ensure that Afghan forces are ready to assume authority for the province, which is a gateway to Kabul.

Asked if Karzai’s latest outbursts against the U.S. are undermining trust, Dunford said the Afghan president may be under political pressure to send a message to his constituents.

“Karzai has both an internal and external audience, and he knows far better than I how to message the internal and external audiences,” Dunford said.

A key test of the Afghan National Security Forces’ ability to deal independently with insurgents will come this summer when the forces will lead the battle for the first time, with the U.S. providing only some advice and support, Dunford said.

The U.S. and Afghanistan are negotiating a bilateral security agreement to ensure that any U.S. military personnel stationed in Afghanistan after 2014 remain immune from Afghan laws.

To contact the reporter on this story: Gopal Ratnam in Kabul at gratnam1@bloomberg.net
To contact the editor responsible for this story: John Walcott at jwalcott9@bloomberg.net

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