Spanta, Karzai master Resigns

[Ghundal]

Top Afghan advisor resigns over US pact
A top Afghan advisor has reportedly resigned over disagreements on a strategic partnership deal that will set the framework for continued US presence in Afghanistan beyond 2014, Press TV reports.

Reports say National Security Adviser Rangin Dadfar Spanta has submitted his resignation letter to Afghan President Hamid Karzai, though his resignation has not yet been accepted.

It is widely believed that resignation of Spanta, a former foreign minister, was part of an effort to pressure Karzai into a compromise on the Strategic Partnership Agreement.

Karzai is against two of the most contentious issues being negotiated -- the night-time raids and the US transfer of detention facilities to Afghan government control.

An Afghan official said on Tuesday that the United States is persistently pressuring President Karzai to submit to the deal.

Ezatullah Safi, the deputy director of Karzai's media information center, said the intense pressure comes as the president demands an end to night-time raids by US troops in Afghanistan and a timeline for Afghans to assume control over the US-run detention centers.

There are increasing doubts on whether Washington and Kabul will be able to reach a long-term Strategic Partnership Agreement as US-Afghanistan relations have been heavily strained in recent weeks.

DB/MB

[Amir al Ghaznavi]

Afghan-US strategic partnership talks falter
* Obstacles include disputes over transfer of America-run detention centres, night raids, quarrels within Afghan president’s inner circle

KABUL: Efforts to forge a deal that will govern the American military presence in Afghanistan beyond a planned US troop withdrawal in 2014 are faltering, current and former Afghan officials said on Monday.

They said obstacles include disputes over the transfer of American-run detention centres, night raids and quarrels within the Afghan president’s inner circle that led one of his top advisers to threaten to resign.

The failure to make headway on a strategic partnership document reflects growing animosity between Afghan President Hamid Karzai and the United States, which reached its lowest level after the desecration of the holy Quran and other Islamic texts at a US military base on February 20. That incident sparked six days of angry riots across Afghanistan that left 30 people dead, including six US troops who were killed by Afghan security forces.

Karzai has been stubborn about his demands — apparently so much so that he is losing the backing of some of his own top aides. Although the president cannot be seen to be a pushover to the US on sovereignty issues, many top Afghan officials believe that Afghanistan’s government is too shaky to stand on its own. They sense that Washington is now pushing back against Karzai in the talks, and fear that the Americans may simply wash their hands of Karzai or perhaps the entire Afghan war.

Afghan officials stress that Afghanistan wants a deal, but that its sovereignty should be respected. “Afghanistan is committed to have a long-term strategic partnership with the United States of America, who is our important international ally. But as we have mentioned repeatedly, the Afghan government wants to sign a strategic partnership with the US for the long term, and the national sovereignty of Afghanistan should be respected in that strategic partnership,” Afghan Foreign Ministry spokesman Janan Mosazai told reporters on Monday.

“The president can’t afford not to make a deal with the United States, which provides Afghanistan with billions of dollars in development aid and funds most of the training for the country’s army and police, which are to take control of the country’s security at the end of 2014,” he said.

A senior Afghan government official told Reuters that Kabul has been pressing the Americans hard to hand over the detention facility at NATO’s Bagram airbase, where the desecration took place.

“The United States government thinks Afghanistan does not have the ability or the international standards to run the prison and also insists that night raids can’t be stopped overnight as it’s a key tool against the insurgents,” he said.

The US spent $22 billion in the past two years for training and is expected to contribute the bulk of the approximately $4 billion a year that 260,000-strong force will need to operate in 2015 and beyond.

An Afghan government official, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss the sensitive negotiations, said that more than two months ago National Security Adviser Rangin Dadfar Spanta submitted his resignation after disagreements erupted between him and Karzai over the strategic partnership document.

Spanta, who is spearheading the talks, wants Karzai to compromise on the two most contentious issues being negotiated — night raids and the US transfer of detention facilities to Afghan government control.

Karzai did not accept Spanta’s resignation, but kept the letter and did not destroy it or throw it out. Spanta verbally threatened to resign on two subsequent occasions, mostly recently in the past several days, the official said.

The official and Davood Moradian, who was an adviser to Spanta when he was foreign minister, said the strategic partnership deal might not be ready for a NATO summit in May. Such a delay could torpedo the deal, as the United States has already been showing decreasing enthusiasm about it, they said.

Spanta was on a trip to China and not available to comment, but Moradian said the resignation threat was part of an effort to pressure Karzai into a compromise. “There is a possibility that if that tactic didn’t work he would resign,” said Moradian, assistant professor of political science at American University in Kabul. Moradian was the chief policy adviser to Spanta when he was foreign minister. agencies

http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default...6-3-2012_pg1_6

[Amir al Ghaznavi]

this davood moradian character....why is his name so iranian?

afghan farsiwans dont typically use the "ian" suffix, and they pronounce it Daud not Davood

[randolph85]

karzai has a tainted legacy so its natural that his only big stand be this partnership agreement. i am sure he knows that he is known as a modern day shah shuja, so he is doing what he can to at least save face and make a stand on such an important issue.

[Ghundal]

That's what I was thinking too

He will def sign something . Why his dancing around ? Who knows? Whether it means anything is the question

Spanta though def calls the shots on this Kabul mayoral government

The point is its either continue war with occupation or end occupation and have peace

Theres only two ways this goes, and it definitely does not go on a track where a limited occupation is accepted

If that was the case, there would be no talks (at whatever level)in Qatar at all. The Qatar "talks" are paralleling the Geneva process

It's a lose lose situation for the Spanta Karzai gov, that's why they are so opposed to whatever preliminary talks are happening in Qatar

[randolph85]

spanta is a clown, i think he is only there because he must be good at paperwork or at the very least is an agreeable figure among the various parties. when someone is an agreeable personality, it usually means they are weak and don't have the full confidence of any one party. spanta recently spoke out against the taliban and their inclusion into the government, his leanings are extremely pro west. not that speaking out against the taliban is a bad thing, or unexpected with the afghan govt, but his comment was in response to the qatar office. that, i find a bit troubling.

[Ghundal]

Well obviously Spanta and Karzai are upset about the Qatar situation .

They obviously are smart enough to figure out what it means

[Levanaye Zalmaye]

Apparently, Karzai has agreed to close down Baloch liberation fighter camps inside Afghanistan in exchange for what it appears is Pakistan's willingness to give Karzai access to the Taliban. I believe it was the 22nd of February that Karzai was in Islamabad but the Punjabi generals refused to allow him direct access to the Taliban.

Both Kayani and Karzai have expressed displeasure at having been kept out of the loop as it were with regards to Qatar. Of course, Kayani also knows that as long as he has the Taliban leadership's families in Rawalpindi, his country's plan of returning Afghanistan to the status of Pakistan's 5th province will not be destroyed.

So from amongst the Taliban, the US, Pakistan and Karzai, the only one who has no chips left and has nothing to offer is Karzai.

[Levanaye Zalmaye]

Please show the sources

First of all, do you actually think that Pakistan knows the location of the Afghan insurgency ?

Havent they repeatedly refused to talk with Karzai?

I think we need to move away from repeating unbacked assumptions .

As you pointed out, the Qatar talks, ongoing as they are, has not included Kayani or Karzai.

To put it in perspective, the Geneva talks that saw the Soviet withdrawal was not something the Soviets boasted about .

Unofficial or official talks always end wars

There is no loop or mystery to these talks except just conculsively bringing this war/occupation to an end

Are you asking me whether or not Pakistan knows that Mullah Nazir, Hafiz Gul Bahadur and Jalaludin Haqqani are in North Wazirstan and the Quetta Shura is in Quetta? I don't know... I don't think so... I mean, even after they signed the Waziristan Accords with these groups in 2006, I have a feeling they don't know where these groups are... after all, Waziristan has a lot of mountains and it's at least 5 days away on foot, 2 on camel.

The Afghan president, it is learnt, wanted Pakistan to deliver top Taliban leadership for peace talks. But sensing that wasn’t happening for now, he lost his temper at the meeting held to discuss ways of reviving joint efforts for peace and reconciliation in Afghanistan.

A high-ranking Afghan official speaking about the discussions with the Pakistani side claimed that Pakistanis no longer shied away from accepting links with the Taliban.

“The relationship with Taliban is clear. Fortunately, the government of Pakistan no longer denies that this relation exists,” he said. However, he did not elaborate what he meant by “links with Taliban”.

The government, in its public pronouncements, has always denied maintaining links with the group.

Foreign Minister Hina Rabbani Khar acknowledged that the bilateral session with Afghanistan did not proceed smoothly.

http://www.dawn.com/2012/02/18/persisting-differences-mar-pak-afghan-talks.html

ISLAMABAD: Interior Minister Rehman Malik said on Sunday that Afghanistan had closed the training camps of Baloch separatists in that country, adding that this was done at the intervention of Afghan President Hamid Karzai who had admitted recently that some of the troubles in Balochistan were originating from his country.

http://www.dawn.com/2012/03/05/karzai-acted-against-separatists-malik-afghan-camps-for-baloch-militants-shut.html

KANDAHAR: Afghan officials are holding talks with the Taliban in Pakistan, the head of a provincial peace council in the insurgency’s heartland Kandahar said on Tuesday, in a possible signal that Islamabad is boosting its support for Afghan peace efforts.

Kandahar peace council’s chairman Ata Mohammad Ahmadi said the officials had been meeting for “some time” with mid-level Taliban commanders in Quetta, where the leadership of the militant group is reported to be based.

“In the last 10 days, our peace council delegation has gone to Quetta three times in twos and threes,” he said.

The Afghan government has repeatedly urged Pakistan to support its efforts to bring the Taliban to the negotiating table.

http://www.dawn.com/2012/02/22/kandahar-peace-team-visited-quetta-three-times-in-10-days-afghan-officials-in-talks-with-quetta-taliban.html

By the way, these talks are not about ending the war. These talks are about how much control Pakistan and the US will exert in Afghanistan after 2014. Pakistan is busy trying to assure Washington that it will not allow any global "Jihadists" to settle in Afghanistan after the US "draws down". Pakistan has consistently told the US that its interests in Afghanistan are visavis India (and that's true to an extent) but Washington is weary that an all-out Taliban government would inevitably give shelter to al-Qaeda-types.

So just as it was in Geneva, the Afghans themselves will be mere pawns and cannon fodder in this game.

[Ghundal]

I dont think Pakistan or Karzai play into these "talks" at all, nor do I think that Pakistan with its record of "handing" people over really knows the whereabouts of Taliban leadership. I also doubt the Taliban/Afghan insurgency (however one terms it) would actually put themselves in the custody of Pakistan.

I think this has been a speculation all along, and will remain so.

Pakistan may turn a blind eye to what US and Karzai officials term "safe havens" in what is considered Pakistan, but to think that they actually have control over the Afghan insurgency seems to be now out of question. It is complex, but indications appear to point otherwise.

I think Hinna Khar's recent outburst at telling Karzai that it is ridiculous to expect Pakistan to produce Taliban leaders to talk to was in fact honest (thats a first for Pakistan).

I think you dont understand the process of these talks and how complex they are.

The Afghan insurgency and the Pakistani insurgency are linked, not separate. For Pakistan, they obviously want an end to the insurgency there too. The sticking point there is that for that to end, then they would obviously also have to move with talks of their own. Those talks would probably center around ending their role in the "War on terror."

These talks are nothing to speak about, especially, when the Afghan insurgency was supposed to not exist in the first place.

In other words, these talks precede the end however one wants to see it, and whenever it does end (end of war/occupation). That is what one takes from it.

In the Geneva talks, the Afghan insurgents and the Soviets were not having a tug of war- it was withdrawal, and that was it.

there is no mystery to it.

[Levanaye Zalmaye]

Hmm Ghundal, I'm posting here after a long time and it appears that you're still (mid)guided by wrong facts. It really will help if you read a book or two. For instance, the Geneva Accords did not even have the Afghan 'insurgents' as a party to them. In fact, they were held between the Soviet-friendly Kabul government and CIA-backed Islamabad. The Kabul government wanted Islamabad to respect its sovereignty - instead, the Punjabi generals sacked and subjugated all of Afghanistan. And we don't want history to repeat itself.

Also, it's an open secret in Pakistan that the GHQ backs the Taliban. Of course, you'd know all this if you lived in Afghanistan or Pakistan. Khar wasn't being honest. Where do the Waziristan Accords fit into all of this? Pakistan doesn't exercise operational control over the Taliban but it exerts a great amount of political influence on them. If Islamabad wants, it can choke the Taliban's supply lines and the insurgency will die out within a month. The Taliban know that. They also know that the ISI knows where their families live in Peshawar, Rawalpindi and Islamabad.

Name one Taliban leader that Islamabad has handed over to the US.

[khushal]

Wheather the taliban leadership is in pakistans pocket or not, it does not matter. the foot soldier and low level commanders fight for their own reasons and are not really controlled by the quetta shura or the haqqanis. Most of you seem to forget that when the Najib government fell, noone could control the low level commanders and they just did what they wanted.

The ANA soldiers that shot US soldiers were not acting under orders from anyone but were merely pissed off at the US soldiers for their disrespect and mistreatment.

[khushal]

As far as this Karzai demands go, I think he is showing the americans that they need him more than he needs them which is true and he should start growing some balls. If america washes their hands from afghanistan, what are the consequences, what did they accomplish, what about the war on terror and more than a trillion dollars spent and countless lives killed. Do you beleive that the americans would actually tell its public that they have nothing to show for this war on terror. They came , they embolden their enemy and they ran like chickens. America entered the war on terror with strength and ended up weak. Not only will AQ be back in afghanistan but other groups would have been emboldened and America as the paper tiger theory would have played out. I dont think that is how its going to end.

Pakistan can give all the guarantees in the world, if america cant control it, how can they. Afghanistan is ungovorned/ungovornable space on the planet where the rule of law has been unable to penetrate it.