Britain's Afghan withdrawal

[David Guyatt]

There's this:

Afghan forces take control of Nato security following news of peace talks

Announcement of talks between the US and the Taliban welcomed by British as foreign troops begin to return home


Richard Norton-Taylor
guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 19 June 2013 01.38 BST


Afghan national forces will lead all military operations in the country from 19 June, President Hamid Karzai has said. Photograph: Xinhua/Landov/Barcroft Media
As Afghan forces officially took over control of security across their country from Nato troops, senior British military officials described an unprecedented operation leading to a virtually invisible "UK footprint" there.


Equipment ranging from heavily-armoured trucks to the brass casing of spent bullets - the market for brass is "extraordinarily good" now, observed a British brigadier - will be returned to the UK by air, road, and rail, at a cost unofficially estimated at between £600m and £2bn.


Brigadier Duncan Capps has been in charge of the project, spending the last six months in British bases in Lashkar Gar and Camp Bastion in the southern Afghan province of Helmand. "As a logistician", he said, he found "Afghanistan a most difficult place to operate, hot and high, and without a port."


Between now and December next year when all foreign troops will have ended their combat role, British forces will have sent back to the UK 2,700 vehicles by air and other kit by road through Pakistan to the port of Karachi, or north through central Asia by road and rail to Riga, the capital of Latvia on the Baltic, for onward shipment to Southampton.


4,500 containers or TEUs, as the Ministry of Defence calls them (the acronym stands for Twenty Foot Equivalent Units), will be packed with small arms, ammo, quad bikes, and other less valuable kit, and put on trucks.


More than 1,000 TEUs have already been despatched to the UK as have 625 vehicles. The equipment has to be "bio washed" before it enters the UK to meet Department for Environment standards. No "warlike" goods will be sent via the potentially dangerous Pakistani route, Capps said.


The number of patrol bases occupied by British troops has already fallen from 137 at the height of the conflict two years ago, to 13. The number will fall further to just four by end of the year.


The main task for British - and US - troops after 2014 will be to continue mentoring and training Afghan forces. Britain has contributed to an officer training college in Kabul, dubbed a "Sandhurst in the sand". Britain could also maintain a discreet presence of special forces there, as the US is expected to.


Very little will be "gifted" to Afghan forces, Capps said. What will includes beds, night sites, and mine detecting equipment. Capps suggested that expensive kit, including armoured vehicles paid for by British taxpayers will be sent home in what conditions he described as "theatre-exit standard", ready for storage and for use in any new emergency.


The number of British troops in Helmand, currently about 9,000, is due to fall to 5,200 by the end of this year.


Tuesday's announcement of talks between the US and the Taliban will be welcomed by British troops. General Sir Peter Wall, the head of the army, said last year referring to the prospect then of such talks: "The real fixes are at the political level...progress in this domain is vital if we are to achieve a soft landing by 2014."

(my bolding)

And then there's this:

Hamid Karzai suspends US-Afghanistan security pact talks
President accuses Washington of 'inconsistent statements and actions' with regard to bilateral security agreement


Emma Graham-Harrison in Kabul
guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 19 June 2013 12.16 BST
Jump to comments (32)


Hamid Karzai. Negotiations on a bilateral security agreement (BSA) between the US and Afghanistan began earlier this year. Photograph: S Sabawoon/EPA
Afghanistan's president, Hamid Karzai, has suspended talks on a long-term security deal to keep US troops in his country after Nato leaves in 2014, accusing Washington of duplicity in its efforts to start peace talks with the Taliban.


The announcement came the day after the Taliban opened a "political office" in Qatar, saying they wanted to seek a peaceful solution to the war in Afghanistan, and the US announced plans for talks with the insurgent group.


News that American diplomats would sit down with Taliban leaders for the first time since the US helped oust the group from power in 2001 prompted speculation that real progress towards a negotiated end to the war might be in sight.


US officials underlined that they aimed mostly to facilitate talks between Afghans, although they do have issues to tackle directly with the Taliban, including a possible prisoner exchange.


But while the Taliban hinted at meeting US demands of a break with al-Qaida saying Afghan soil should not be used to harm other countries there was only the barest of nods to the Afghan government's request that they talk to the current administration and respect the constitution.


Diplomats say Karzai was kept in the loop about plans for the formal opening of a Taliban office in Qatar, but had expected it to be couched differently. After hours of ominous silence, his office issued a terse statement in effect condemning the move.


"In view of the contradiction between acts and the statements made by the United States of America in regard to the peace process, the Afghan government suspended the negotiations, currently under way in Kabul between Afghan and US delegations on the bilateral security agreement," the palace said.


The final straw for Karzai was their display of a white Taliban flag and repeated use of the name "Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan", both in their statement and on a printed backdrop used for a televised press conference, according a senior Afghan official.


It was the name the group used when they ruled from Kabul, and together with their official flag gave the group's representatives the air of a government-in-exile as they addressed the media.


The US had pledged the Taliban would only be able to use the office as base for talks, not as a political platform, and Karzai felt the press conference was a clear violation of that promise, an official Afghan source told the Guardian.


The president was also unhappy about the lack of any reference to the country's constitution, which both he and the US say the Taliban must respect.


Instead the statement made more than one reference to the "establishment of an independent Islamic government"; as the group have often denounced Karzai as a puppet, that could be read as a call for a change of leader or change of system.


The decision to suspend talks was made after a meeting on Wednesday morning with his national security team and close aides, a source said.


The Afghan government's anger is a blow to hopes that the country's warring factions could be taking the first real steps towards peace; despite US cash and military might, 12 years of fighting have shown it cannot secure the country alone.


In another reminder of the fragile situation in Afghanistan, the Taliban claimed responsibility on Wednesday for an attack on Bagram air base that killed four American troops.


A Taliban spokesman said insurgents had fired two rockets into the base outside the Afghan capital, Kabul, late on Tuesday. US officials confirmed the base had come under attack by mortar or rocket and four troops had been killed.


Karzai has long been a strong advocate of peace talks and cautiously welcomed the idea of a base in Doha, while pushing hard for any negotiations to move to Afghanistan as fast as possible.


But he has also drawn clear red lines, one of them being that the Taliban office first mooted in 2011 should not be used as a base for fundraising or building diplomatic relationships.


A source at the High Peace Council, a body created by Karzai to lead government negotiation efforts, said it was still planning to send a delegation to Qatar, but it was unclear when; and without the support of the Afghan government there is little hope it can make much progress.

Joined up journalism from the Grauniad.

[Jan Klimkowski]

Yup.

Let's do this in C21st hieroglyphs.



:noblesteed::noblesteed:

:panic::panic:

:unclesam::unclesam:



nort:nort:

:flypig::flypig:

:monkeypiss::monkeypiss:

:wirlitzer::wirlitzer:

And they all lived happily ever after.

Whilst the circus found some new civilian prey.

[Danny Jarman]

Meanwhile the Taliban are opening an office in Doha, a move which the US has praised. :pinkelephant:

[David Guyatt]

Meanwhile the Taliban are opening an office in Doha, a move which the US has praised. :pinkelephant:

Interesting. The BBC has a story on this HERE.

This move seems to suggest the prospect that the US might have reached an agreement with the Taliban for them to rule Afghanistan post US withdrawal, and the suspension of the talks with Karzai is because he now knows that? Someone needs to watch to see if any changes occur in heroin production post withdrawal, and if the oil and gas boys move in to set up that pipeline?

The problem this scenario presents is how the US military and bereaved families of soldiers killed in action are going to respond knowing that their war enemies become bosom buddies even before the killing stops - because not even a fig leaf period of time is being allowed to honour the dead.

[Magda Hassan]

....Someone needs to watch to see if any changes occur in heroin production post withdrawal, and if the oil and gas boys move in to set up that pipeline?
.....

https://deeppoliticsforum.com/forums/sho...ight=Burma

[David Guyatt]

....Someone needs to watch to see if any changes occur in heroin production post withdrawal, and if the oil and gas boys move in to set up that pipeline?
.....

https://deeppoliticsforum.com/forums/sho...ight=Burma

How very strange. Must be purely coincidental. hutup:

[Jan Klimkowski]

And the band played on.....

'We should have talked to Taliban' says top British officer in Afghanistan

Exclusive: General Nick Carter says west could have struck a deal with Taliban leaders after they were toppled a decade ago

Emma Graham-Harrison in Kabul
The Guardian, Friday 28 June 2013 17.30 BST
Jump to comments (6)

General Nick Carter (L) chats with Afghan men in Helmand province in Afghanistan in 2009. Photograph: Manpreet Romana/AFP/Getty Images

The west should have tried talking to the Taliban a decade ago, when they had just been toppled from power, the top British commander in Afghanistan has told the Guardian, barely a week after the latest attempt to bring the insurgent group to the negotiating table stuttered to a halt.

General Nick Carter, deputy commander of the Nato-led coalition, said Afghan forces would need western military and financial support for several years after western combat troops head home in 2014. And he said the Kabul government may have to accept that for some years it would have only shaky control over some remoter parts of the country.

Speaking exclusively to the Guardian, he said: "Back in 2002, the Taliban were on the run. I think that at that stage, if we had been very prescient, we might have spotted that a final political solution to what started in 2001, from our perspective, would have involved getting all Afghans to sit at the table and talk about their future," he said.

Acknowledging that it was "easy to be wise with the benefit of hindsight", Carter added: "The problems that we have been encountering over the period since then are essentially political problems, and political problems are only ever solved by people talking to each other."

But he believed the police and army had been shaped into sustainable institutions that were strong enough to protect a critical presidential election next year, and guarantee stability for "the majority" of the country after the western withdrawal.

The US and Afghan governments are pushing hard for negotiations to end a conflict that has dragged on for more than 12 years. But critics have long argued that the west could have struck a deal with moderate Taliban leaders after ousting the group from power in 2001, perhaps saving thousands of lives and billions of dollars.

One academic who studies the Taliban said the group tried to reach out to their own and the US governments until 2004, and would have made major compromises. "There would not have been too much negotiating to be done, even, in 2001 or 2002, because the Taliban's senior leadership made their approaches in a conciliatory manner, acknowledging the new order in the country," said Alex Strick von Linschoten, author of An Enemy We Created.

Today the insurgent group dominates swaths of the country, and seems ambivalent at best about negotiating ahead of the departure of foreign troops. Underlining how challenging efforts to broker peace talks are, the latest efforts collapsed in diplomatic farce last week.

The Taliban opened an office in Qatar which was meant to be a formal base for meetings, and was welcomed by Washington, but the Afghan president, Hamid Karzai, shut down the process after Taliban spokesmen presented the villa as a de-facto embassy for a government-in-exile.

Carter said he was confident that Nato's handover of security to Afghan forces, finalised last week, would eventually bring the Taliban to the negotiating table.

"What the opponents of the Afghan government now realise is they are likely to be up against capable Afghan security forces who are going to be here in perpetuity and therefore that old adage that 'We have the clocks but the Taliban have the time', has now been reversed," he said.

"They are now up against security forces who have the time, and they are also Afghan forces … for those reasons I think that there is every chance people will realise that talking is the answer to this problem," added Carter, who previously served as the top Nato officer in southern Afghanistan, the Taliban's birthplace.

With a potential political solution far off, 2013 has been a year of heavy violence. Civilian casualties are rising and a string of high-profile attacks have hit Kabul including an assault on the airport and an audacious raid into the heart of the heavily fortified diplomatic and military zone.

These assaults were unlikely to let up before western troops left, as the Taliban tried to position for possible talks, and wage a campaign to claim credit for a the western exit, Carter said, although troops were actually leaving on a timetable set by the Afghan government and Nato in 2010.

"First of all people like to negotiate from a position of strength, and secondly I think the opponents of Afghanistan would like to appear to compel the international community's withdrawal," Carter said. "I don't think its surprising that we are seeing spectacular attacks in Kabul and a continuance of attacks elsewhere."

The strength of the insurgency meant Kabul would not control all of the country for some years to come, said Carter, who previously described Afghanistan's likely post-2014 situation as "stable instability".

"There will be parts of Afghanistan which will not necessarily be as closely linked to central government as others … there will therefore be some local political solutions which won't in any way threaten central government," Carter said. "That phenomenon may go on for a while."

Nato only began the build-up of Afghanistan's police and army in earnest in 2009, and the rapid pace of expansion towards a target of 350,000 meant the police and army would need help for years to come, particularly in highly skilled areas such as bomb disposal, medical evacuation and logistics.

"The security forces will need continuing development because they have been built very quickly," Carter said. One major roadblock for now was the lack of planes and helicopters, critical to dominating a large, mountainous country with poor and often deadly roads. "The plan to field the airforce … is designed to give them more capability every year, but probably not to be fully fielded until 2017-18."

But he said their institutions were now sustainable and overall he was optimistic about Afghanistan's future, as long as the US and its allies came through on promises of financial and military support.

"When you see how this country has developed in the last 10 to 12 years, it's a completely different place, and people have completely different expectations," he said. "We owe it to all of those who have invested a great deal of effort in what we have been doing here since 2001 to see it through."

[Tracy Riddle]

I don't know how the British were dumb enough to get stuck in that country for a fourth time.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Anglo-Afghan_War
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Anglo-Afghan_War
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third_Anglo-Afghan_War

[Magda Hassan]

And the band played on.....

'We should have talked to Taliban' says top British officer in Afghanistan

Let me fix that quote for you:

'We should not have created the Taliban' says top British officer in Afghanistan