Despite Scare Headlines, Expect U.S. Troops in Afghanistan Post-2014

It is not easy to interpret what is going on in Afghanistan. President Hamid Karzai, the post-9/11 quisling of the West, has been engaged in a prolonged, nasty squabble with his paymasters. Just yesterday the New York Times published a frontpage blockbuster, "Karzai Arranged Secret Contacts With the Taliban," that was really more smoke than fire. All reporters Azam Ahmed and Matthew Rosenberg came up with is that Karzai had tentative, unproductive talks at the end of last year with the Taliban, and that no deal is currently on the table:

But other Afghan and Western officials said that the contacts had fizzled, and that whatever the Taliban may have intended at the outset, they no longer had any intention of negotiating with the Afghan government. They said that top Afghan officials had met with influential Taliban leaders in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, and in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, in recent weeks, and were told that any prospects of a peace deal were now gone.

But reading Ahmed and Rosenberg is fruitful in that it reminded me of something that I had already forgotten -- the United States itself was negotiating with the Taliban:

The only known genuine negotiating channel to those leaders [with connections to Mullah Omar] was developed by American and German diplomats, who spent roughly two years trying to open peace talks in Qatar. The diplomats repeatedly found themselves incurring the wrath of Mr. Karzai, who saw the effort as an attempt to circumvent him; he tried behind the scenes to undercut it. 

Then, when an American diplomatic push led to the opening of a Taliban office in Qatar, Mr. Karzai lashed out publicly at the United States. Afghan officials said that to them, the office looked far too much like the embassy of a government-in-exile, with its own flag and a nameplate reading “The Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan.” Within days, the Qatar initiative stalled, and Mr. Karzai was fuming at what he saw as a plot by the United States to cut its own deal with Pakistan and the Taliban without him. 

In the wake of the failure in Qatar, Afghan officials redoubled their efforts to open their own channel to Mullah Omar, and by late autumn, Mr. Karzai apparently believed those efforts were succeeding. Some senior Afghan officials say they did not share his confidence, and their doubts were shared by American officials in Kabul and Washington.

Something is happening here and what it is ain't exactly clear. As good a place as any to start, just in terms of the basics, is today's story by Peter Baker and Matthew Rosenberg, "Old Tensions Resurface in Debate Over U.S. Role in Post-2014 Afghanistan." Yesterday Obama met in the White House for a powwow on Afghanistan with his top military brass:

As part of his review, Mr. Obama met Tuesday with Gen. Martin E. Dempsey, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the general’s vice chairman, Adm. James A. Winnefeld Jr.; Gen. Joseph F. Dunford Jr., commander of American and allied forces in Afghanistan; Gen. Lloyd J. Austin III, the head of the United States Central Command; and Adm. William H. McRaven, head of the United States Special Operations Command.

Afghanistan will have a presidential election in April. What I don't understand about all the jockeying of Karzai by the Obama administration is why not wait to cut a deal with his successor? Probably because any successor to Karzai will be as tough or tougher when it comes to negotiating a bilateral security agreement (BSA) with the United States.

Right now there are some 55,500 Western troops in Afghanistan, 36,500 of which are American.

Post-2014, NATO is planning for a force of 8,000 to 12,000, made up of two-thirds Americans; the U.S. wants to keep a force of 10,000, with an additional 5,000 troops made up of foreign forces.

The United States wants a BSA that includes the usual status of forces agreement (SOFA) immunity guarantee as well as the right to continue its terror-inducing practice of raiding private residences. Karzai has flip-flopped on signing the BSA and threatened to bargain a deal solely with NATO. The U.S. military is allegedly pressuring Obama into an all or nothing posture, "Give us want we want, Karzai, or we will pull all our troops out of country."

As a sign that Uncle Sam is serious, Congress has already cut development aid to Afghanistan in half to $1.2 billion, with the remaining money threatened if Karzai goes ahead with the release of 37 suspected Taliban detainees.

We know that Karzai has plenty of leverage. Pakistan is a huge national security issue for the U.S. The CIA drone bases in Afghanistan are prized for their ability to project power into and eavesdrop on a nuclear-armed Pakistan that also harbors Al Qaeda and Taliban leadership.

Regardless of the U.S. tough talk of a "zero option," Obama is not about to give up those drone bases. Karzai knows this. He knows he can't lose, no matter how much he angers his bosses in Congress and the White House. He is playing with house money.

Despite all the distracting scare headlines, expect a deal to be brokered that keeps U.S. troops in Afghanistan post-2014. Those drones will continue to fly east to Pakistan.