US Defense Secretary Leon Panetta (Credit: tribune.com.pk)
KABUL, June 7: Defence Secretary Leon Panetta said on Thursday the United States was reaching the limits of its patience with Pakistan because of the safe havens the country offered to insurgents in neighbouring Afghanistan.
It was some of the strongest language used by a US official to describe the strained ties between Washington and Islamabad.
Panetta was speaking in the Afghan capital, where he arrived for talks with military leaders amid rising violence in the war against the Taliban and a spate of deadly incidents, including a NATO air strike said to have killed 18 villagers.
“It is difficult to achieve peace in Afghanistan as long as there is safe haven for terrorists in Pakistan,” Panetta, who arrived in Kabul a day after a deadly insurgent bombing, told reporters.
“It is very important for Pakistan to take steps. It is an increasing concern, the issue of safe haven, and we are reaching the limits of our patience.”
Pakistan’s cooperation is considered critical to US efforts to stabilise Afghanistan before most foreign combat troops leave at the end of 2014.
President Obama & President Zardari (Credit: dailymail.co.uk)
CHICAGO, May 21: Nato leaders agreed Monday to hand Afghan forces the lead for security from mid-2013 as they rush to end the war and ensure Afghanistan can ward off Taliban militants after foreign troops leave.
In a Chicago summit declaration, US President Barack Obama and his 27 military allies confirmed plans to withdraw combat troops by the end of 2014.
But they also ordered military officers to begin planning a post-2014 mission to focus on training, advising and assisting Afghan troops and special forces.
“As Afghans stand up, they will not stand alone,” Obama told the opening of a gathering of more than 50 world leaders, focused on ending the international mission in Afghanistan and helping the war-torn country shape its own destiny.
Nato Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen vowed: “We all remain committed to our goal, a secure and democratic Afghanistan in a stable region.” But while the Western alliance coalesced around an exit strategy, they struggled to convince Pakistan to reopen a vital supply route for their troops in Afghanistan.
The leaders declared that the transition process was “irreversible” and would put Afghan forces “in the lead for security nationwide” by mid-2013, allowing US-led troops to gradually shift their focus from combat to support.
“We are gradually and responsibly drawing down our forces to complete the ISAF (International Security Assistance Force) mission by 31 December 2014,”they said in a declaration setting in stone a roadmap agreed in 2010.
With the Taliban still resilient after a decade of war, Nato leaders sought to reassure Afghan President Hamid Karzai that the international community would not abandon his country after 130,000 foreign combat troops are gone.
The 28 allies, who discussed Afghanistan over dinner at the American football Soldier Field late Sunday, were meeting Monday with their 22 partners in the war as well as other world leaders including Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari.
Zardari’s attendance had raised hopes his government was ready to lift a blockade on Nato convoys, but talks on reopening the routes have stumbled over Islamabad’s demand to charge steep fees for trucks crossing the border.
In their declaration, the Nato leaders said it was still working with Pakistan to reopen the border crossing, which was used to bring fuel and other supplies to foreign troops, “as soon as possible.” Islamabad shut its border to Nato supplies in November after a botched US air raid that left 24 Pakistani soldiers dead.
To ferry troops, food and equipment into Afghanistan, the US-led force in Afghanistan has relied on cargo flights and a more costly northern route network that passes through Russia, Central Asia and the Caucasus.
Obama said after talks with Karzai on Sunday that there were still “hard days ahead” in a conflict that has left that has killed over 3,000 coalition soldiers, maimed thousands more and left tens of thousands of Afghans dead.
In a sign of growing impatience within the alliance, new French President Francois Hollande refused to back down from his decision to pull troops out in 2012, a year earlier than planned.
“I told everyone I spoke with that this was not negotiable because it was a question of French sovereignty and everyone understood,” he said, adding France would continue to train Afghan forces after 2012.
Karzai said his country no longer wanted to be a “burden,” urging the international community to complete a security transition to his Afghan forces.
The Afghan leader came to the summit armed with a demand for $4.1 billion a year from Nato and other nations to fund his forces, giving them the means to prevent a civil war.
Thousands of protestors have taken to the streets in recent days calling for an end to war. Although the rallies have been largely peaceful, scuffles broke out Sunday when some hardcore demonstrators refused police orders to disperse.
Police said 45 people had been arrested and four police officers suffered minor injuries.
LAHORE, May 8: India is willing to look at more land border transit points with Pakistan and opening new border crossings at places like Munnabao in Rajasthan is a possibility , Sharat Sabharwal, India’s high commissioner to Pakistan said on Monday. He was addressing the inaugural session of the 2nd Aman Ki Asha Indo-Pak Economic Conference . At present, Attari-Wagah is the only land route for trade between the two nations.
Later this month, Indian and Pakistani home secretaries are expected to sign off on an agreement that will liberalize the business visa regime. In the works are multiple entry visas, abolishing police checkposts and multi-city visas.
These measures are expected to give a fillip to Indo-Pak trade which today is languishing at sub $3-billion . Sabharwal said the Indian commerce ministry believes that trade between the two can touch $12billion in the next five years. He reiterated commerce minister Anand Sharma’s promise that for every one step Pakistan takes, India will take two. “We will like to carry the process of trade liberalization forward in a manner to create a win-win situation for both sides.” The Indian high commissioner appreciated Islamabad’s decision to accord the most favoured nation (MFN) status to India and to move from a positive list of imports from India to a negative list.
Delivering the keynote address, Pakistan Prime MinisterYousaf Raza Gilani said core issues should be settled through dialogue and called for enhanced people-to-people contact. Gilani said his government was committed to normalization of ties. “Non-state actors from both sides of the border are determined to harm relations. We need to be vigilant . He said that in sectors like information technology, education, health engineering, there is huge scope for cooperation. He commended the Times of India and the Jang group of Pakistan for launching the Aman ki Asha initiative when tensions were running high between the two nations.
Hoping that the India-Pakistan economic conference will boost the peace process, he said poverty, disease and ignorance should not become the fate of the region. “Our people have suffered because of the policies of the past. They deserve better. No more time should be wasted .” He described industry captains at the conference as the “best ambassadors of peace” for both countries . “The world is marching on and it is time for us to shed the baggage of the past and grab the opportunity at hand and act with urgency to build relations of mutual trust.”
Speakers at the conference highlighted the fact that improved economic relations between the two nations will lead to peace and prosperity . Some delegates were worried that offering MFN status to India might result in highly skewed trade relations with the balance tilting in favour of India. Their concerns were addressed by Pakistani business leaders such as Mian Muhammed Mansha, chairman, MCB Bank, and Bashir Ali Muhammed, chairman, Gul Ahmed.
They were unequivocal in saying that greater trade will benefit the Pakistani people and industry would gain from greater competition in the longer run. Mansha said he was keen on starting a bank in India.
Adi Godrej, CII president and head of the Godrej Group said the two largest economies of south Asia should work together to ensure that bilateral trade touches $10billion in the near term. Textiles, agriculture, engineering, IT, education and healthcare are sectors which can see immediate traction, he said. “Removal of tariff barriers should set in motion processes for the removal of asymmetries in trade.”
Group managing director of Jang Group Shahrukh Hasan said the Aman ki Asha initiative has helped change perceptions in both countries. “Peace which has been tantalizingly elusive is inevitable,” he said. He and almost all speakers said a liberalized visa regime is a must for any forward momentum in relations. “MFN and FDI are of no use without people being able to travel across the border,” he said.
Rahul Kansal, executive president , Times Group, said history has shown that when foes develop deep economic stakes in each other, war becomes a non-option . “We are at a historic moment; it will be pity if we can’t seize the opportunity.”
Aman ki Asha is an initiative of the Times of India and the Jang Group of Pakistan and the Lahore trade meet is co-sponsored by CII and Pakistan Business Council.
“The reason for concentrating on them is that Obama is the head of infidelity and killing him automatically will make (Vice President Joe) Biden take over the presidency,” the al-Qaida leader explained to his top lieutenant. “Biden is totally unprepared for that post, which will lead the U.S. into a crisis. As for Petraeus, he is the man of the hour … and killing him would alter the war’s path” in Afghanistan.
Administration officials said Friday the Obama-Petraeus plot was never a serious threat.
The scheme was described in one of the documents taken from bin Laden’s compound by U.S. forces on May 1, 2011, the night he was killed. I was given an exclusive look at some of these remarkable documents by a senior administration official. They have been declassified and will be available soon to the public in their original Arabic texts and translations.
The man who bin Laden hoped would carry out the attacks on Obama and Petraeus was Pakistani terrorist Ilyas Kashmiri.
“Please ask brother Ilyas to send me the steps he has taken into that work,” bin Laden wrote to his top lieutenant, Atiyah Abd al-Rahman. A month after bin Laden’s death, Kashmiri was killed in a U.S. drone attack.
Bin Laden’s plot to target Obama was probably bluster since al-Qaida apparently lacked the weapons to shoot down U.S. aircraft. But it’s a chilling reminder that even when he was embattled and in hiding, bin Laden still dreamed of pulling off another spectacular terrorist attack against the United States.
The terrorist leader urged in a 48-page directive to Atiyah to focus “every effort that could be spent on attacks in America,” instead of operations within Muslim nations. He told Atiyah to “ask the brothers in all regions if they have a brother … who can operate in the U.S. (He should be able to) live there, or it should be easy for him to travel there.”
U.S. analysts don’t see evidence that these plots have materialized.
“The organization lacks the ability to plan, organize and execute complex, catastrophic attacks, but the threat persists,” said a senior administration analyst who has carefully reviewed the documents.
The bin Laden who emerges from these communications is a terrorist CEO in an isolated compound, brooding that his organization has ruined its reputation by killing too many Muslims in its jihad against America. He writes of the many departed “brothers” who have been lost to U.S. drone attacks. But he’s far from the battlefield himself in his hideout in Abbottabad, Pakistan, where he seems to spend considerable time watching television.
Because of constant harassment and communications difficulties in Pakistan’s tribal areas, bin Laden encouraged al-Qaida leaders to leave North and South Waziristan for more distant and remote locations.
Bin Laden’s biggest concern was al-Qaida’s media image among Muslims. He worried that it was so tarnished that, in a draft letter probably intended for Atiyah, he argued the organization should find a new name.
The al-Qaida brand had become a problem, bin Laden explained, because Obama administration officials “have largely stopped using the phrase ‘the war on terror’ in the context of not wanting to provoke Muslims,” and instead promoted a war against al-Qaida.
Bin Laden ruminated about “mistakes” and “miscalculations” by affiliates in Iraq and elsewhere that had killed Muslims, even in mosques. He told Atiyah to warn every emir, or regional leader, to avoid these “unnecessary civilian casualties,” which were hurting the organization.
It would be better to concentrate on attacking the U.S. homeland. This led to sharp disagreements with his deputy, Ayman al-Zawahiri, who favored easier and more opportunistic attacks on U.S. forces in Iraq, Afghanistan and other areas.
Bin Laden and his aides hoped for big terrorist operations to commemorate the 10th anniversary of Sept. 11, 2001. They also had elaborate media plans. Adam Gadahn, a U.S.-born media adviser, even recommended to his boss what would be the best television outlets for a bin Laden anniversary video.
“It should be sent for example to ABC, CBS, NBC and CNN, and maybe PBS and VOA. As for Fox News let her die in her anger,” Gadahn wrote. At another point, he said of the networks: “From a professional point of view, they are all on one level — except (Fox News) channel, which falls into the abyss as you know, and lacks neutrality, too.”
What an unintended boost for Fox, which can now boast that it is al-Qaida’s least favorite network.
Islamabad, April 29: The beheaded corpse of a British aid worker has been discovered in the Pakistani city of Quetta, almost four months after he was kidnapped.
The body of Khalil Rasjed Dale was left on a road outside the city, in southern Baluchistan province, with a note attached which said he had been killed because a ransom had not been paid to his captors.
Dale, who had been working for the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), was kidnapped in January while driving near the organisation’s Quetta office.
He was abducted by gunmen as he made his way home in a clearly-marked ICRC vehicle on 5 January. His assailants are said to have bundled him into a car about 200m from an ICRC residence.
At the time, police in Quetta said Dale was abducted by unknown assailants driving a Landcruiser following a visit to a local school. He was travelling with a Pakistani doctor and a driver, who were not seized.
Quetta police chief Ahsan Mahboob said the killers’ note read: “This is the body of Khalil who we have slaughtered for not paying a ransom amount.”
Dale had been a Muslim convert for more than 30 years.
William Hague, the foreign secretary, said “tireless efforts” had been made to secure Dale’s release and the British government had worked closely with the Red Cross.
“I utterly condemn the kidnapping and killing of Mr Dale and send my deepest condolences to his family and loved ones as they come to terms with their tragic and distressing loss,” he said.
“We are devastated,” said ICRC director general Yves Daccord. “Khalil was a trusted and very experienced Red Cross staff member who significantly contributed to the humanitarian cause.
“All of us at the ICRC and at the British Red Cross share the grief and outrage of Khalil’s family and friends.”
Separatist militants and the Taliban are extremely active in Quetta, which is just a couple of hours’ drive to the border with Afghanistan’s Kandahar province, where the Taliban is battling US forces.
The ICRC has working relations with movements such as the Taliban, but its staff remain vulnerable to criminals and kidnappers.
Retired nurse Sheila Howat, a former colleague of Dale’s at Dumfries and Galloway Royal Infirmary, said: “It’s dreadful what has happened to him, really awful. The world has lost someone who really cared for others.”
Something is missing in Washington, and I’m not referring to bipartisanship. I’m talking about Pakistan expertise.
Last year, Shuja Nawaz, head of The Atlantic Council’s South Asia Center, lamented the exodus of Pakistan experts from Washington policy-making jobs. Yet this only represents the tip of the iceberg.
Scan the speaker rosters of the city’s think-tank symposia, study the bylines of policy briefs and commentaries, and scrutinise the talking heads on DC talk shows.
What do you see? The same set of names, drawn from Washington’s small group of esteemed Pakistan-watchers.
Numbering about two dozen, they include diplomats (Teresita Schaffer), scholars (Stephen Cohen, Christine Fair), and those who have engaged both public service and academia (Daniel Markey, Lisa Curtis, Marvin Weinbaum). In more recent years, this fraternity has also taken in transplanted Pakistanis (such as Nawaz).
Yet beyond this venerable group, there is little else. In a city that constantly refers to the immense strategic significance of Pakistan, this deficit of expertise is striking — yet also unsurprising.
Americans, after all, are notoriously uninformed about foreign affairs — and even about a nation that their government insists is so important (my countrymen have been known to confuse Pakistanis with Palestinians).
Also, US public opinion toward Pakistan is strongly negative — a February 2012 Gallup poll found that only 15 per cent of Americans regard Pakistan positively (in the last 10-plus years, only once has this figure exceeded 30 per cent). Such a climate does not exactly encourage Americans to gravitate toward Pakistan.
Even those who wish to become students of Pakistan face obstacles. This is because US higher education doesn’t emphasise Pakistan like it does other nations and regions. A range of universities — the University of Washington, University of California at Berkeley, and SAIS/Johns Hopkins, to name just a few — boast programs specifically dedicated to the study of China. Yet Pakistan Studies programs are rare.
By no means does this signify a paucity of Pakistan-oriented scholarship in the United States — consider, just for starters, Anita Weiss’s work on gender, Sarah Halvorson’s on geography, and Ayesha Jalal’s on history — yet it does suggest that America’s higher education system refuses to place a high premium on Pakistan.
Little wonder many recent graduates flock to careers as China hands or Middle East specialists — yet few vow to become part of the next generation of Pakistan experts. My own experience is illustrative; during the early months of the Iraq War, I decided to pursue a master’s degree in Middle East studies. I entered the South Asia field only later on, through a combination of luck and happenstance (and I’m glad I did).
Wait, you may say: What about that cottage industry of Pakistan experts that has sprouted in Washington in recent years? “Only in DC can you be a Pakistan expert without ever visiting the region,” grumbled Washington-based journalist Huma Imtiaz last year. “Yet your average Pakistan expert, fresh out of college or mid-career, claims to possess a deep understanding of how Pakistan’s politics, military, and society work.”
Alas, this is not a cottage industry of Pakistan specialists — it is one of Af-Pak experts. In Washington, Pakistan is inextricably tied to Afghanistan and to the war that the US is embroiled in there. Little wonder two of the most popular (and best) information portals consulted by Washington Pakistan-watchers — the AfPak Channel and Colin Cookman’s Pakistan/Afghanistan/Terrorism News brief — focus on Afghanistan as much as (if not more than) Pakistan.
Predictably, those representing this new wave of “Pakistan experts” are mostly security specialists fixated on the Afghanistan War; few nurture an abiding interest in Pakistan’s public health woes, its burgeoning IT sector, or Lollywood; they are more concerned about the threat posed to US forces in Afghanistan by militant sanctuaries in North Waziristan, and about Islamabad’s role in the Afghan endgame.
With Washington’s Pakistan-followers effectively proxies for Afghanistan War- watchers, what will happen in 2014, when US combat forces have left Afghanistan? Will a reduced US military footprint in Afghanistan spell an end to Pakistan-heavy policy papers, panels and punditry in Washington? Will there still be ample experts on hand to contemplate Pakistan’s natural resource shortages, economic malaise, and education crisis — long-term challenges having little to do with Afghanistan?
Here is where the narrative grows less gloomy. Washington boasts a promising organisation, the Young Professionals Working Group on Pakistan, which comprises aspiring analysts of the country. Some of the capital’s most insightful Pakistan analysis in recent years has come from new and younger faces — Shamila Chaudhary, Moeed Yusuf, Joshua White, Stephen Tankel.
Further afield, a cultural engagement program, Caravanserai, has barnstormed across America, hosting performances and film screenings by Pakistani artists — and hoping to pique schoolchildren’s interest in Pakistan.
Bipartisanship may be a lost cause in Washington. Yet there is still hope for strengthening and expanding the city’s ranks of Pakistan experts.
Michael Kugelman is the program associate for South Asia at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington, DC. He can be reached at michael.kugelman@wilsoncenter.org and on Twitter @michaelkugelman
PESHAWAR, April 16: Authorities on Monday removed four senior officials over a jail break in the restive northwest and launched a probe into whether it had any link to multiple attacks in Afghanistan.
The provincial government said a “total failure” of intelligence was to blame for the break-out, in which dozens of inmates including Taliban militants and death row prisoners fled a prison after armed militants attacked before dawn on Sunday.
More than 150 heavily-armed militants stormed the jail outside the town of Bannu, near the lawless tribal region where Taliban and al Qaeda linked militants have carved out their stronghold.
“It was a total failure of intelligence agencies,” Mian Iftikhar Hussain, information minister of the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, told a news conference.
The militants came in dozens of vehicles, continued to operate for more than two hours and went back undetected, he said.
“We have removed the deputy superintendent of Bannu Jail, the city commissioner and two other senior police officers,” he said, adding that a five-member committee had been set up to investigate the matter.
The provincial government has also taken note that the jail break in Pakistan coincided with multiple attacks by Taliban insurgents across the border in Afghanistan on Sunday.
Some 36 insurgents were killed nationwide as Afghan forces regained control of Kabul on Monday 18-hour after the Taliban assault, which left 11 members of the security forces and four civilians dead.
Hussain said “the committee will try to find out whether the jail break in Pakistan, claimed by local Taliban, had any link to coordinated attacks in Afghanistan.” Senior Bannu police official Iftikhar Khan earlier told AFP that a total of 384 inmates had escaped the jail, of whom 53 returned voluntarily while 11 others were arrested.
Most of those who escaped were militants, including 34 prisoners on death row.
Ehsanullah Ehsan, spokesman for the Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) militant group, claimed responsibility for the attack which he said was launched to free some of their key members.
The attack began around 1:00 am (2000 GMT Saturday) and continued for two hours, with militants in cars and pick-up trucks shooting and throwing grenades to force their way into the prison, which held 944 prisoners.
A former member of the air force sentenced to death for an attack on former president Pervez Musharraf was among the escaped militants, according to officials.
Adnan Rasheed was convicted after a bomb planted under a bridge in Rawalpindi near Islamabad in December 2003 exploded moments after Musharraf’s motorcade passed. His appeal is pending before the Supreme Court.
Pak President Zardari Meets Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh (Credit: ft.com)
One of the more unheralded achievements of the PPP government has been the way it has repaired relations from the nadir of the 26/11 Mumbai attacks, when war seemed a very realistic possibility. Rather than try to be overly ambitious, the government has cautiously taken small steps towards lasting peace, with trade and regular high-level meetings inching the process forward.
President Asif Ali Zardari’s trip to the shrine of Sufi saint Khwaja Moinuddin Chisti in Ajmer, which allowed him to hold talks with Indian Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh, was yet another indicator that the two countries are moving firmly towards setting up a lasting peace between them. By all accounts the talks were cordial and Dr Singh accepted Zardari’s offer of a return visit to Pakistan. This was also the first time a Pakistani head of state had visited India since Musharraf in 2005, marking another landmark in the slow return to normalcy.
The two countries are fortunate that they both have leaders who are committed to the peace process but that does not mean that danger is not lurking around every corner. The army could easily scuttle whatever progress has been made by working around the elected government and embarking on yet another military adventure along the lines of the Kargil conflict.
In India, too, the hawks (of which significant sections of the media is a part) remains resolutely anti-Pakistan. Issues like Hafiz Saeed, who had a bounty placed on him by the US for actionable information leading to his conviction, are still unsolved. The two have so far decided to at least go ahead with lowering trade barriers with Pakistan set to grant India Most-Favoured Nation status by the end of the year. However, the rigid visa regime between the two, which makes it next to impossible for the citizens of either to visit, must be relaxed as well.
Also, as the recent landslide tragedy at Siachen has showed, both countries need to realise that perhaps the time has come to demilitarise the glacier.
Far more lives on either side have been lost to the ravages of weather than to actual combat and the cost of maintaining troops for both countries on the world’s highest battlefield should be enough to necessitate a final push for a bilateral drawdown.
STOCKHOLM, March 19: Asia tops other regions when it comes to weapon imports, according to a study released Monday by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI).
Over the past five years, Asia and Oceania accounted for 44 percent in volume of conventional arm imports, the institute said.
That compared with 19 percent for Europe, 17 percent for the Middle East, 11 percent for North and South America, and 9 percent for Africa, said the report.
India was the first world importer over the period, accounting for 10 percent in weapons volume.
It was followed by South Korea (6 percent), China and Pakistan (both 5 percent), and Singapore (4 percent), according to the independent institute which specialises in arms control and disarmament matters.
These five countries accounted for 30 percent of the volume of international arms imports, said SIPRI.
“India’s imports of major weapons increased by 38 percent between 2002-2006 and 2007-11,” SIPRI said.
“Notable deliveries of combat aircraft during 2007-11 included 120 Su-30MKs and 16 MiG-29Ks from Russia and 20 Jaguar Ss from the United Kingdom,” it said.
While India was the world’s largest importer, its neighbour and sometime foe Pakistan was the third largest.
Pakistan took delivery of “a significant quantity of combat aircraft during this period: 50 JF-17s from China and 30 F-16s,” the report added.
Both countries “have taken and will continue to take delivery of large quantities of tanks,” it also noted.
“Major Asian importing states are seeking to develop their own arms industries and decrease their reliance on external sources of supply,” said Pieter Wezeman, senior researcher with the SIPRI Arms Transfers Programme.
China, which in 2006 and 2007 was the world’s top arms importer, has now dropped to fourth place.
“The decline in the volume of Chinese imports coincides with the improvements in China’s arms industry and rising arms exports,” according to the report.
But “while the volume of China’s arms exports is increasing, this is largely a result of Pakistan importing more arms from China,” it added.
“China has not yet achieved a major breakthrough in any other significant market.”
China is however the sixth largest world exporter of weapons behind, the United States, Russia, Germany, France, and Britain.
In Europe, Greece was the largest importer between 2007 and 2011, the institute said.
Between 2002 and 2011, Syria increased its imports of weapons by 580 percent, while Venezuela boosted its imports over the same period by 555 percent, it reported.
Morocco saw its own imports increase by 443 percent, it added.
The volume of international transfers of major conventional weapons was 24 percent higher in the period 2007-11 compared to the 2002-2006 period. (AFP)
Afghan Grief after Massacre by US Soldier - (Credit: pressirtv)KABUL, Afghanistan, March 15 — Prospects for an orderly withdrawal of NATO forces from Afghanistan suffered two blows on Thursday as President Hamid Karzai demanded that the United States confine troops to major bases by next year, and the Taliban announced that they were suspending peace talks with the Americans.
Getting talks started with the Taliban has been a major goal of the United States and its NATO allies for the past two years, and only in recent months was there concrete evidence of progress.
And the declaration by President Karzai, if carried out, would greatly accelerate the pace of transition from NATO to Afghan control, which previously was envisioned to be complete by 2014. Defense officials admitted there was a major divide between Mr. Karzai’s declaration and the American goals of training the Afghan security forces and conducting counterinsurgency operations. Successful counterinsurgency requires close working relationships with rural Afghans to help build schools, roads and bring about other improvements.
Asked if it was possible to take all American forces out of villages by 2013 and still train Afghan security forces and conduct counterinsurgency operations, a senior American defense official replied, “It’s not clear that we would be able to.”
Mr. Karzai declaration came in reaction to widespread Afghan anger over the massacre by an American soldier of 16 civilians in Kandahar on Sunday, and the decision of the military authorities to remove the soldier from Afghanistan, which was reported on Wednesday.
The Taliban statement, issued in English and Pashto on an insurgent Web site, said talks with an American representative had commenced over the release of some Taliban members from the Guantánamo Bay prison, but accused the American representative of changing the preconditions for the talks.
The statement did not make clear what preconditions were objectionable, but the statement emphasized that the Taliban were only interested in talking with the Americans, and criticized “propaganda” about the talks that American officials had issued. Zabiullah Mujahid, a spokesman for the Taliban reached by cellphone at an undisclosed location, said the statement suspending the talks was genuine but declined to discuss it further.
It was unclear if the two developments might have been related. But both came to light just as Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta had left Afghanistan after a tense two-day visit that included talks with Mr. Karzai, and the Afghanistan president’s announcement in particular appeared to be a surprise. On Wednesday, President Obama said in Washington that the timetable for an Afghanistan withdrawal would not change.
Defense officials traveling with Mr. Panetta in Abu Dhabi said that the tone of the meeting between Mr. Karzai and Mr. Panetta was more positive than Mr. Karzai’s statement would indicate, and that he made no demands of the defense secretary — suggesting that the statement was in part aimed at a domestic audience enraged not only by the massacre but also by recent Koran burnings.
The officials acknowledged that Mr. Karzai told Mr. Panetta during their meeting that American troops should be confined to major bases by next year, but the officials sought to publicly tamp down the differences and portray the two countries as working together. “Secretary Panetta said, ‘We’re on the same page here,’ ” the Pentagon press secretary, George Little, quoted Mr. Panetta as telling Mr. Karzai.
Mr. Panetta, speaking to reporters after the meeting, said he had told Mr. Karzai that the military pledged a full investigation of the massacre and would bring the gunman to justice. He said that Mr. Karzai had not brought up the transfer of the suspect, an Army staff sergeant, to Kuwait.
Although the move was likely to further anger Afghans, who had called for him to be tried in their country, Lieutenant Gen. Curtis M. Scaparrotti, the No. 2 American commander in Afghanistan, told reporters that the Afghans had been informed of the move ahead of time, and he said that “their response is that they understood.”
General Scaparrotti said that the American military would likely not make the suspect’s name public until and if he was formally charged. He did not say when that might happen. “We are conscious of due process,” he said.
American officials said in recent weeks that there had been no talks of any substance since January, when Ambassador Marc Grossman, the United States special representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan, and his team last visited the region. Even the meetings held then did little to move the process beyond the “talks about talks” stage, and the Afghan government had not yet begun to play any significant role in the effort, despite statements from Mr. Karzai to the contrary, the officials said.
The main obstacle appeared to be executing the first set of confidence-building measures: A prisoner swap that would transfer five senior Taliban leaders held at Guantánamo to house arrest in Qatar in exchange for a Westerner being held by the insurgents.
The plan faced a series of difficulties, notably uncertainty about what conditions the five Taliban would be living under in Qatar, and American lawmakers on both sides of the political divide expressed deep skepticism about the release of the insurgents.
Faced with substantial political opposition, the Obama administration wanted to wait to release the men until it could get a direct exchange for the Westerner, the American officials said. But it appeared Thursday that the Taliban had grown tired of waiting for the Americans to begin the process, and that the insurgents feared the conditions under which their compatriots would be housed in Qatar would be too restrictive.
“Acknowledging their involvement in Qatar talks was a significant move for the Taliban. They expected that the U.S. would move quickly with confidence-building measures,” said Michael Semple, a fellow at the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy at Harvard’s Kennedy School. “The transfer of Taliban leaders to Qatar was top on the list. The Taliban announcement of suspending engagement in Qatar is a response to their frustration at the U.S.’s slowness to deliver.”
Mr. Semple said a series of crises to beset the Americans in the Afghanistan conflict since the start of the year had added another layer of uncertainty to the talks, emboldening Taliban hardliners to press back against the peace effort. “The Taliban also believe that the U.S. mission in Afghanistan is in disarray and their hardliners want to take advantage of that by launching a new fighting season.”
Still, the Taliban statement appeared to leave open the door to a resumption of the process, terming their move a “suspension.”
Angry over its exclusion from the first round of talks, which involved the Taliban opening a political office in Qatar as well as the proposed prisoner releases, Mr. Karzai’s government has tried to establish its own track for peace talks, saying Saudi Arabia should be an intermediary, and sending its own envoy to Guantánamo to talk to Taliban prisoners.
The Taliban statement repeated previous declarations by the insurgents that they viewed Afghan government officials as puppets of the Americans and would not hold talks with them. “Hamid Karzai, who cannot even make a single political decision without the prior consent of the Americans, falsely proclaimed that the Kabul administration and the Americans have jointly started peace talks with the Taliban,” the statement said.
The Taliban were only at the stage of discussing prisoners and the Qatar office, the statement said, adding, “neither have we accepted any other condition with any other side nor have we conducted any talks with Karzai administration.”
On the withdrawal of American forces to major bases by 2013, Mr. Karzai said that Afghan authorities were capable of taking charge of security in rural areas. The massacre Sunday took place in a rural part of Panjwai District, in southern Kandahar Province.
The shooting suspect has been described by sources as a 38-year-old staff sergeant in the Second Battalion, Third Infantry Regiment, Third Stryker Brigade, Second Infantry Division based at Joint Base Lewis-McChord in Washington State.
Elisabeth Bumiller contributed reporting from Abu Dhabi, U.A.E.
