The Taliban have announced that the talks in Qatar with the USA, at this point about the freeing of prisoners, have broken down. At the same time, Afghan President Hamid Karzai has called for the USA to hand over security duties to the Afghan National Army by 2013, rather than 2014, after a meeting with US Defence Secretary Leon Panetta in Washington. The Taliban announcement was perhaps made inevitable by the recent massacre in Kandahar of 16 Afghan civilians by an American soldier. President Karzai’s demand should be seen in the same context. The President and the Taliban both have Kandahar as their homeland, and neither could afford to ignore the events there.
The USA had set great store by the talks in Qatar, which they hoped would lead to a face-saving exit for them. Their breakdown has led to a great setback and President Karzai’s offer is meant to provide an alternative. If indeed the Taliban do not provide a safe exit, the Americans can withdraw their occupying force under the screen of the Afghan forces. Indeed, President Karzai has made apparent the real US target for the Afghan National Army: not the survival of the regime, but its ability to provide the safe exit craved by the USA. President Karzai, without setting a timetable, has told the USA that it should withdraw all forces from villages and relocate them in their bases. This would be preliminary to withdrawing the forces from the country altogether. The great attraction to the USA of President Karzai’s proposal is that it allows President Obama to make a dramatic election-year announcement about US troop commitments in Afghanistan. This would allow him to counter demands that the troops be brought home.
The USA’s desire to get out of Afghanistan should show the Pakistan government the need for it to abandon the alliance with the USA. Not only has it sacrificed so many lives, not just to bomb blasts, but also to American depredations, the latest being the killing of 24 Pakistani soldiers by NATO helicopter gunships at its Salalah checkpost, not to mention the many troops that have been killed in the USA’s so-called war on terror. The Pakistani government has been asked by the Afghan President to play a role in the endgame, and it must not hesitate to engage the Taliban in the talks that the USA has so far stopped it from having. Pakistan has no interest in ensuring a safe exit for the USA, but it does have an interest in a stable and peaceful Afghanistan. It must ensure that the final shape of the Afghan settlement ensures that.