By Ernesto Londoño and Greg Jaffe,
KABUL—Afghan President Hamid Karzai demanded Thursday that the United States pull back from combat outposts and confine its troops to military bases, an apparent response to Sunday’s shooting rampage by a U.S. staff sergeant.Meanwhile, the Taliban said it was suspending preliminary peace talks with the United States because of Washington’s “alternating and ever changing position,” and accused the U.S. of reneging on promises to take meaningful steps toward a prisoner swap.
The announcements followed a meeting between Karzai and U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta in Kabul, after which U.S. officials said the two sides had made progress discussing the contentious issue of nighttime raids--but did not mention any discussion of a pullback.
The latest developments reflect unprecedented strains in the U.S.-Aghan relationship, which reached a low point last month after the burning of Korans by U.S. troops set off a wave of violent protests and retaliatory killings.
Support for the war is slipping both in the United States and among Afghans. Sunday’s massacre of 16 civilians--and the transfer of the staff sergeant suspected in those killings to a U.S. base in Kuwait--further outraged the Afghan people.
The killings, Karzai’s office said in a statement Thursday, have “damaged the U.S. and Afghan relationship.”
Foreign troops in Afghanistan must withdraw from village outposts and return to large NATO bases, the president’s statement said. Karzai also said he wants Afghan troops to assume primary responsibility for security nationwide by the end of next year, ahead of the time frame U.S. commanders have endorsed.
Karzai does not have the authority to enforce a pullback of foreign troops, however. And the United States has rebuffed previous demands that it halt night raids and remove private security contractors from the country.
U.S. military officials tout the night raids on the homes of suspected militants, conducted by U.S. and Afghan special operations forces, as essential to defeating the Taliban insurgency. Karzai has complained that the raids produce too many casualties.
Karzai’s spokesman said in an interview this week that the Afghan government hopes the issue can be resolved through a memorandum of understanding, similar to a recent agreement that laid out the terms for the gradual transfer of detainees held by the U.S, to Afghan custody. Spokesman Aimal Faizi said the Afghan government is insisting that foreign troops be barred from entering Afghan homes and that soldiers obtain search warrants before storming the houses of suspected insurgents.
“There have been very good discussions,” Panetta said Thursday before leaving the country. He said he believes there is a way to “satisfy President Karzai’s concerns and meet our needs as well
Panetta made no mention of Karzai’s pullback request during the news conference. But Lt. Lauren Rago, a spokeswoman for the NATO command in Kabul, said later that the coalition was aware of Karzai’s statement. “This is something that we will continue to discuss through diplomatic channels,” Rago said.
The Taliban announcement that it would suspend negotiations included a statement that it would forgo opening a political office in Qatar, dashing already faint hopes about a negotiated settlement to the decade-long war.
On Thursday, Afghan Foreign Minister Zalmay Rasool was on a visit to Qatar, which the Afghan government saw as a potential breakthrough in asserting a role for the Karzai administration in the talks.
The U.S. Embassy spokesman in Kabul did not immediately respond to a phone call and e-mail seeking comment about the Taliban statement, which was posted on its Web site Thursday afternoon.
The Obama administration has been contemplating releasing five Taliban members held in the U.S. prison in Guantanamo Bay, including four senior members of the militant group. The Taliban’s bargaining chip in the swap has been widely assumed to be Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl, an American soldier kidnapped in June 2009.
The Taliban statement said American officials had backtracked on promises to take steps toward as swap, and also had backtracked on an agreement to allow the Doha office to be used for diplomatic purposes.
“With the passage of time, they turned their backs on their promises and started initiating baseless propaganda” that overstated how far along the negotiations were, the Taliban statement said.
The Taliban also took issue with Karzai’s suggestion that his administration was playing a role in the talks. The statement said Karzai “cannot even make a single political decision without the prior consent of the Americans.” It called negotiating with Karzai’s government “pointless.”
The Taliban implied that it would be willing to restart talks if and when the “Americans clarify their stance on the issues concerned and until they show willingness in carrying out promises instead of wasting time.”
The statement concluded by calling on regional countries and other nations to help the Taliban in “expelling the invaders in order to achieve peace and stability in the whole region.”
Panetta, in his visit to Afghanistan, was eager on his trip to highlight the security gains that the U.S. has made over the last year in battling the Taliban, as well as the current Pentagon strategy for gradually turning over primary responsibility for combat operations to Afghan forces by the middle of 2013.
“We are on the right path. I am absolutely convinced of that but the key is to stay on that path,” Panetta said.
But his trip also highlighted the continued turmoil and violence that exists here. As the defense secretary’s plane landed at Camp Bastion on Wednesday, an Afghan translator at the base stole a vehicle and appeared to use it to attack a group of Marines waiting for Panetta on the runway.
Panetta said he had “absolutely no reason to believe” that the attack was aimed at him.
“Whatever happened here was directed at others on the field,” he said. “This is a war area. We are going to have these kinds of incidents.”
The translator was driving a stolen pickup truck, which crashed into a fence. He then apparently set himself on fire, U.S. officials said. The man died of his injuries hours later.
“His burns were extensive,” said Lt. Gen. Curtis M. Scaparrotti, the number-two American commander in Afghanistan. “We don’t know his intent . . . or what motivated him.”
Scaparrotti said the man, who was not armed, had “tried to hit the [U.S. Marines] on the ramp,” but missed them and crashed his vehicle. He struck and wounded a British soldier while stealing the pickup truck.
The incident appeared to be the latest in a string of recent attacks aimed at U.S. forces inside secure NATO bases or Afghan government facilities. Six U.S. soldiers were killed in multiple incidents by Afghan soldiers or police following the burning of several copies of the Koran by U.S. troops in February.
In their meeting, Panetta and Karzai also discussed Sunday’s killings in Kandahar province. The staff sergeant believed responsible has been transferred to a U.S. military facility in Kuwait, despite calls from Afghan lawmakers for him to remain in Afghanistan and be tried under local laws.
Lt. Col. Jimmie Cummings, a U.S. military spokesman in Kabul, said the Afghan government was notified that the United States intended to fly the suspect out of the country, a step he called “routine standard operating procedure when we are preparing to charge an individual and introduce them into the military justice system.” Cummings said he did not know when charges would be filed.
In a briefing before Panetta’s departure from Afghanistan, Scaparrotti told reporters that U.S. troops would likely be conducting combat operations in the more violent areas of Afghanistan into 2014. The Obama administration’s goal is to turn over security responsibility to Afghan forces by the fall of 2013.
“I do believe we’ll still be doing combat operations through 2013 into 2014—although in a more limited nature,” Scaparrotti said. “The east will be the toughest obviously and that is where we will have combat operations going on longer than in other areas.”
Most of those combat operations will likely occur in eastern Afghanistan where enemy forces can often escape across the porous border into Pakistan to train and get supplies.
“I think the greatest threat to the campaign’s success is the sanctuary in Pakistan,” Scaparrotti said. “It allows [the enemy] that regeneration. It allows them to train in safety and it is something that will be difficult to deal with as we move forward.”
Also on Thursday, hundreds of protesters took to the streets in the southern province of Zabul to demand that the U.S. soldier believed responsible for Sunday’s killings be prosecuted in Afghanistan , provincial officials said. They did not appear to know the soldier had been moved to Kuwait.
“They have termed the killings an inhumane act and want the punishment to be carried out inside Afghanistan,” deputy provincial governor Mohammad Jan Rasoulyar said.
Sayed Mohammad Akhund, a lawmaker from Kandahar province, questioned whether the United States was trying to cover up facts about the case. “One person was not behind this,” Akhund said. “It was a formal operation backed by air support. We want all the culprits to be tried in Afghanistan, under Afghan law.”
Mohammad Nayem Hamidzai, another lawmaker from Kandahar, said the soldier’s departure is likely to generate fresh outrage.
“People have been killed with no justification and then burnt,” he said. “They have proved that they are savages.”
The soldier’s unit is from Joint Base Lewis-McChord, near Tacoma, Wash. He will likely face prosecution there if he is charged. A decision on whether to convene a court-martial would be made by an Army general who is in the soldier’s chain of command.
Amid continuing furor over the slayings, U.S. officials showed a base surveillance video of the staff sergeant surrendering to Afghan security guards upon his return to his combat outpost. The video, recorded from a spy balloon floating over the outpost, was released as part of an effort to knock down rumors that other U.S. troops might have been involved.
Panetta, making his third trip to Afghanistan, pledged during his visit that a recent string of setbacks would not force the United States to alter its strategy here.
Maj. Gen. Mark Gurganus, the senior Marine commander in southern Afghanistan, virtually ruled out further restrictions on night raids, which have drawn repeated criticism from Afghan President Hamid Karzai and have been a major stumbling block in talks on the framework of a long-term security relationship.
“I don’t know how much more accommodating we can be with what is a critical element of a counterinsurgency fight,” Gurganus said. All the night raids are being conducted by joint teams of U.S. and Afghan forces, he said.
Speaking to U.S. and Afghan troops at Camp Leatherneck, Panetta sought to tamp down worries about the course of the U.S. war effort after the Kandahar massacre and the Koran burnings, which U.S. officials say was accidental.
“We have been tested time and time again over a decade of war,” Panetta told the U.S. and Afghan troops who gathered in a stuffy tent. “That is the nature of war. . . . Each of these incidents is deeply troubling, and we have to learn lessons from each of these incidents.”
In a departure from past practice, about 200 Marines at Camp Leatherneck were told to set their rifles outside before hearing Panetta speak. Gurganus said he ordered the move out of respect for the two dozen Afghan soldiers who attended the meeting without weapons. “This is not a big deal,” he said.
In Washington, President Obama insisted that “our forces are making very real progress” in Afghanistan, and he reaffirmed a transition plan under which U.S. and NATO troops would withdraw by the end of 2014.
Addressing a joint news conference at the White House with visiting British Prime Minister David Cameron, Obama said, “We’re going to complete this mission, and we’re going to do it responsibly.”
Special correspondent Sayed Salahuddin contributed to this report.
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