The past week has seen some surprising developments. The US decided to extend the role of combat troops in the country and Parliament met in an extraordinary session to ratify the Bilateral Security Agreement (BSA) with Washington, albeit after some tense moments for the government.
Following a letter from President Ashraf Ghani urging parliamentarians to accelerate the approval of the BSA and Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA), Parliament advanced an extraordinary session scheduled for Nov 26 to Nov 23. There was criticism both outside and inside Parliament at the hurry.
A day later the New York Times reported news of the US policy shift on Afghanistan. The Times said US planes and drones would support Afghan troops in combat in a departure from President Barack Obama’s earlier decision to end US combat operations and pullout the US-led international force by end-2014.
Policy shift
Was the policy shift a unilateral US decision or was it on the request of President Ghani and his national security adviser, Mohammad Hanif Atmar? It is hard to say. Neither the president’s office nor White House has issued a statement.
Amanullah Paiman, Member of Parliament from Kunduz, a critic of Afghanistan’s strategic pact with the US, thinks the hurry with which the BSA was pushed through Parliament shows the government’s disregard for protecting the country’s sovereignty and independence.
Can the extension of US military role in Afghanistan improve the security situation and stop the Taleban? The question is a paradox because US-NATO forces were unable to win the war started with their intervention.
Journalist Ali Boniadi thinks there is no simple answer. “There are two opinions: those who think the presence of US troops would terrify the armed opponents of the government and those who think that presence of US itself is a threat to Afghanistan and Taleban would use that to continue terrorist actions as well as suicide attacks and explosions,” he says.
According to The New York Times, the US may join night raids by Afghan special forces as their advisers. Former president Karzai had banned the night raids as relations with the US soured.
Signals that the ban could be lifted in 2015 have become stronger since news that 200 Afghan special forces have been sent to Kandahar for training in night combat.
Meanwhile military officials have off the record welcomed the promise of direct support of US and NATO forces during night raids in the new year. “We need strong support of external forces during night raids such as helicopters, night search, GPS assistance and better guidance since we are aware (our) armed opponents can easily move to distribute their night letters, and night raids are the only way to stop them,” according to a top military official.
Pushed through
In Parliament on Nov 23, a majority of MPs ratified the BSA and SOFA. However, a few critics of the continued foreign troop presence in Afghanistan, MPs like Abdul Satar Khawasi, MP from Parwan, walked out of Parliament in protest.
Speaking on behalf of the dissenters later, Khawasi said, “Parliament decided on the security agreement in violation of Islamic beliefs, national sovereignty, the will of Afghan people and we are against them.” He alleged the US embassy phoned “some MPs” the previous night to urge them to vote for the BSA.
Abdul Rauf Enami, MP from Badakshan, equally vociferous in his condemnation of the new strategic agreements, accused the US and NATO of “only trying to expand their regional power – they have not paid attention to building infrastructure in the past 13 years”. According to him, it is unlikely they will do anything in the future also.
But Shukria Barakzai, MP from Kabul who survived an assassination attempt by the Taleban on Nov 16, and Habiba Danesh, Takhar MP, have no doubt that Afghanistan stands to gain from the pact. Danesh thinks the fuss is unnecessary. “Most Islamic countries have security and military agreements with the US,” she points out referring to countries in the Gulf.
Barakzai believes the agreements are a “need”, and Afghanistan has signed it as an independent country. “Afghanistan has signed the security agreement based on a need not based on a choice. To say it is against Islamic beliefs is just a statement. We do not have any other option but to sign the two pacts,” she insists.
She hoped the government would be able to extract the maximum advantage from the pacts for the security of the country. The new-NATO led mission will have about 12,000 boots on the ground. The US will keep 9,800 men in Afghanistan after the end of the current year.
Independent voices in civil society think the government should have allowed discussion in Parliament instead of rushing the decision. Freshta Elham, an activist, who believes the strategic agreements are a need, calls their passage through parliament “illegal”. “The security pact with the US and NATO was approved illegally in an extraordinary session without giving an opportunity to opponents to air their reservations or discuss, or show the red and green cards,” she says.
It seems approval has been got at the cost of transparency, and consequently public opinion on the continued military presence of the US in Afghanistan may remain divided.
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