Washington and Kabul are close to signing a strategic pact which would allow thousands of US troops to remain in Afghanistan until at least 2024, The Daily Telegraph claimed on Saturday.
The agreement would allow not only military trainers to stay to build up the Afghan Army and police, but also American special forces and air power to remain on the Afghan soil, the newspaper said. The prospect of the deal has already been met with anger among Afghanistan’s neighbours including, publicly, Iran and, privately, Pakistan.
It also risks being rejected by the Taliban and derailing any attempt to coax them to the negotiating table, according to one senior member of Hamid Karzai’s peace council.
The Daily Telegraph says Afghans wary of being abandoned are keen to lock the US into a longer partnership after 2014, the drawdown deadline. Many analysts also believe the American military would like to retain a presence close to Pakistan, Iran and China. Both Afghan and American officials said they hoped to sign the pact before the Bonn Conference on Afghanistan in December. Barack Obama and Hamid Karzai agreed last week to escalate the negotiations and their national security advisers will meet in Washington in September. Rangin Dadfar Spanta, Karzai’s top security adviser, told The Daily Telegraph that “remarkable progress” had already been made. Spanta said a longer-term presence was crucial not only to build Afghan forces, but also to fight terrorism. “If they train our police and soldiers, then those trainers will not be 10 or 20, they will be thousands.”
“We know we will be confronted with international terrorists. 2014 is not the end of international terrorist networks and we have a common commitment to fight them,” he added.In the past, Washington officials have estimated a total of 25,000 troops may be needed, says the British newspaper.But Spanta said the US would not be granted its own bases, and would be a guest on Afghan bases, he said.
The US officials have said they would be disappointed if a deal could not be reached by December and that the majority of small print had been agreed.On the other hand, Andrey Avetisyan, the Russian ambassador to Kabul, said: “Afghanistan needs many other things apart from the permanent military presence of some countries.”
