US-Afghanistan deal may not happen after all
12 Jan 2014 5:23 AM IST
The assessment was made in recent days by US Ambassador James Cunningham in a classified cable, after President Barack Obama’s administration repeatedly extended the deadline for the agreement, originally due to be signed early last fall.
White House spokesman Jay Carney said this week that the deal must be signed within ‘weeks and not months.’
‘The clock is ticking,’ he said. But Cunningham said he did not expect Karzai to agree to sign the document before presidential elections set to be held in April.
US-Afghan ties hit a new low in recent months after Karzai made a surprise decision not to sign the Bilateral Security Agreement promptly, despite having vowed to do so.
The BSA would see several thousand US troops remain in Afghanistan to provide training and assistance after the NATO combat mission ends in December.
Signing the BSA is a precondition for the delivery of billions of dollars in Western aid for Afghanistan.
‘We continue to urge President Karzai to sign the BSA promptly,’ a senior State Department official told the Post when asked about Cunningham’s cable.
President Barack Obama’s deputies have warned that unless Karzai relents on the security deal soon, there will be no option but to prepare for a full US troop exit - the so-called ‘zero option’.
‘If we cannot conclude a bilateral security agreement promptly, then we will be forced to initiate planning for a post-2014 future in which there would be no US, nor NATO troop presence in Afghanistan,’ Carney warned on Monday.
‘That’s not the future we’re seeking,’ he added. ‘But the further this slips into 2014, the more likely that outcome will come to pass.’
In a separate incident that will further strain ties between Kabul and Washington, Afghanistan said Thursday that it would release scores of alleged Taliban fighters from jail as there was no evidence against them, despite US objections that the men could return to the battlefield as NATO troops withdraw.
Only 16 prisoners arrested by US to be tried, rest will be set free
KABUL: Afghanistan has enough evidence to try only 16 of 88 prisoners that the United States considers a threat to security and plans to free the remaining detainees, the president’s spokesman said on Thursday.
The move will further strain relations between the two countries that are already near breaking point over President Hamid Karzai’s refusal to sign a security deal to shape the US military presence after most foreign troops leave this year. Without a deal, Washington could pull most of its troops out after 2014.
The United States is strongly opposed to their release because it says the prisoners, being held in Afghanistan, have been involved in the wounding or killing of US and coalition troops.
State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki said on Thursday the United States considers 72 of those detainees dangerous.
‘These 72 detainees are dangerous criminals against whom there is strong evidence linking them to terror-related crimes, including the use of improvised explosive devices, the largest killer of Afghan civilians,’ Psaki said at a news briefing.
She said ‘time will tell’ whether the release of the detainees will affect the signing of the agreement. Psaki said it was in the interest of the Afghan people and its government to sign it.
The Afghan government says, however, there is no evidence against 45 of the 88 prisoners, while the evidence against a further 27 detainees is not sufficient to put them on trial.
‘We cannot allow innocent Afghan citizens to be kept in detention for months and years without a trial for no reason at all,’ Karzai’s spokesman Aimal Faizi said.
‘We know that unfortunately this has been happening at Bagram, but it is illegal and a violation of Afghan sovereignty and we cannot allow this anymore.’
‘Osama’s bodyguard to be released from Gitmo’
WASHINGTON: A former Yemeni bodyguard of slain Al Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden, under detention at the Guantanamo Bay prison in Cuba for more than a decade, has been cleared for release by a US government review panel.
Mahmud Mujahid, 33, who allegedly underwent militant training at a secret camp in Afghanistan, is no longer a ‘significant threat’ to the US and is eligible for transfer from the prison at some point, the board decided.
The decision by the board was the first in a series of review hearings that the Obama administration is holding to speed up the eventual closure of the US military prison for terrorist detainees, the Pentagon announced on Thursday.
He has been a captive at Guantanamo since his arrest near Afghanistan’s Tora Bora mountains when US troops were closing in on a Bin Laden hideout not long after the 11 September 2001, attacks, the Los Angeles Times reported.
Mujahid had been accused of being an Al Qaeda fighter and bodyguard to Bin Laden. Bin Laden was killed in a covert US raid in May 2011, in Pakistan’s garrison city Abbottabad.
At one time, he was considered a ‘high risk’ Al Qaeda fighter and ‘a committed jihadist.’
The review board hearing for Mujahid was conducted behind closed doors under a 2011 directive by President Barack Obama to facilitate releases at Guantanamo. The Pentagon held it in secret to test how the process would work.
Of the 155 detainees at Guantanamo, 77 are cleared for release and 70 are likely to undergo review hearings this year.
‘This is just the first of many reviews that must take place in order to finally close Guantanamo,’ Dixon Osburn of Human Rights First, an advocate for detainees, told the daily.
White House spokesman Jay Carney said this week that the deal must be signed within ‘weeks and not months.’
‘The clock is ticking,’ he said. But Cunningham said he did not expect Karzai to agree to sign the document before presidential elections set to be held in April.
US-Afghan ties hit a new low in recent months after Karzai made a surprise decision not to sign the Bilateral Security Agreement promptly, despite having vowed to do so.
The BSA would see several thousand US troops remain in Afghanistan to provide training and assistance after the NATO combat mission ends in December.
Signing the BSA is a precondition for the delivery of billions of dollars in Western aid for Afghanistan.
‘We continue to urge President Karzai to sign the BSA promptly,’ a senior State Department official told the Post when asked about Cunningham’s cable.
President Barack Obama’s deputies have warned that unless Karzai relents on the security deal soon, there will be no option but to prepare for a full US troop exit - the so-called ‘zero option’.
‘If we cannot conclude a bilateral security agreement promptly, then we will be forced to initiate planning for a post-2014 future in which there would be no US, nor NATO troop presence in Afghanistan,’ Carney warned on Monday.
‘That’s not the future we’re seeking,’ he added. ‘But the further this slips into 2014, the more likely that outcome will come to pass.’
In a separate incident that will further strain ties between Kabul and Washington, Afghanistan said Thursday that it would release scores of alleged Taliban fighters from jail as there was no evidence against them, despite US objections that the men could return to the battlefield as NATO troops withdraw.
Only 16 prisoners arrested by US to be tried, rest will be set free
KABUL: Afghanistan has enough evidence to try only 16 of 88 prisoners that the United States considers a threat to security and plans to free the remaining detainees, the president’s spokesman said on Thursday.
The move will further strain relations between the two countries that are already near breaking point over President Hamid Karzai’s refusal to sign a security deal to shape the US military presence after most foreign troops leave this year. Without a deal, Washington could pull most of its troops out after 2014.
The United States is strongly opposed to their release because it says the prisoners, being held in Afghanistan, have been involved in the wounding or killing of US and coalition troops.
State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki said on Thursday the United States considers 72 of those detainees dangerous.
‘These 72 detainees are dangerous criminals against whom there is strong evidence linking them to terror-related crimes, including the use of improvised explosive devices, the largest killer of Afghan civilians,’ Psaki said at a news briefing.
She said ‘time will tell’ whether the release of the detainees will affect the signing of the agreement. Psaki said it was in the interest of the Afghan people and its government to sign it.
The Afghan government says, however, there is no evidence against 45 of the 88 prisoners, while the evidence against a further 27 detainees is not sufficient to put them on trial.
‘We cannot allow innocent Afghan citizens to be kept in detention for months and years without a trial for no reason at all,’ Karzai’s spokesman Aimal Faizi said.
‘We know that unfortunately this has been happening at Bagram, but it is illegal and a violation of Afghan sovereignty and we cannot allow this anymore.’
‘Osama’s bodyguard to be released from Gitmo’
WASHINGTON: A former Yemeni bodyguard of slain Al Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden, under detention at the Guantanamo Bay prison in Cuba for more than a decade, has been cleared for release by a US government review panel.
Mahmud Mujahid, 33, who allegedly underwent militant training at a secret camp in Afghanistan, is no longer a ‘significant threat’ to the US and is eligible for transfer from the prison at some point, the board decided.
The decision by the board was the first in a series of review hearings that the Obama administration is holding to speed up the eventual closure of the US military prison for terrorist detainees, the Pentagon announced on Thursday.
He has been a captive at Guantanamo since his arrest near Afghanistan’s Tora Bora mountains when US troops were closing in on a Bin Laden hideout not long after the 11 September 2001, attacks, the Los Angeles Times reported.
Mujahid had been accused of being an Al Qaeda fighter and bodyguard to Bin Laden. Bin Laden was killed in a covert US raid in May 2011, in Pakistan’s garrison city Abbottabad.
At one time, he was considered a ‘high risk’ Al Qaeda fighter and ‘a committed jihadist.’
The review board hearing for Mujahid was conducted behind closed doors under a 2011 directive by President Barack Obama to facilitate releases at Guantanamo. The Pentagon held it in secret to test how the process would work.
Of the 155 detainees at Guantanamo, 77 are cleared for release and 70 are likely to undergo review hearings this year.
‘This is just the first of many reviews that must take place in order to finally close Guantanamo,’ Dixon Osburn of Human Rights First, an advocate for detainees, told the daily.
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