Taliban urge Afghan president Hamid Karzai to reject US security deal

Taliban offer Karzai rare support but say 'the decision of Afghan nation is clear: they don't want any occupier in our homeland

Emma Graham-Harrison in Kabul

The Taliban have urged the Afghan president, Hamid Karzai, to turn a delay in signing a long-term security deal with the United States into outright rejection, in an unusually polite statement directed at a leader the insurgents have repeatedly denounced as a US puppet.

Karzai last month called a national assembly to vote on the bilateral security agreement (BSA) and then shocked most of the country, including some of his closest advisers, by ignoring the advice of the handpicked group that he sign as soon as possible.

The deal would allow US forces to stay on past the 2014 end of the current combat mission, and seal billions of dollars a year in funding for the Afghan police and military. Karzai's delaying tactics stirred widespread condemnation from many in the Kabul elite worried about how the country would fight the Taliban without foreign funds or back-up.

The Taliban on Monday offered the Afghan leader rare, if somewhat grudging, support for his position so far, but also demanded that he abandon all conditions and reject the pact unilaterally.

"Karzai, the president of the Kabul administration, apparently conditionally refused to sign the BSA," the emailed statement from spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid said. "If he truly understands the real (situation), he should reject it without conditions, from a sense of Afghan spirit.

"The decision of the Afghan nation is clear: they don't want any occupier in our homeland."

The insurgent group's statement came on the day Iraq's foreign minister visited Kabul and admitted that his country still needs "continued US support" to combat widespread sectarian violence, even though it turned down a deal for long-term military support two years ago.

The last American soldiers pulled out of Iraq in 2011 after the two countries failed to agree a pact similar to the one Afghanistan is now being offered. The sticking point was Baghdad's refusal to grant immunity from Iraq law to US troops.

"Our expectation of the government of Afghanistan is to sign the BSA with the US, because Afghanistan needs US support," Tolo television station quoted minister Hoshyar Zebari telling Afghan journalists.

Karzai has said he will not sign the BSA until after a presidential election to choose his successor next year – he cannot stand again – and recently listed a range of new demands, from an immediate halt of all raids on foreign homes to the release of all Afghan prisoners held at Guantanamo day.

The US has said that the negotiations are finished, and Karzai must make a decision by the end of the year, to allow time for planning either a troop departure or the shape of the follow-up presence, expected to be around 8,000 to 10,000 US forces and a smaller number from Nato allies.

If the deal is not signed, all foreign soldiers will leave when the current combat mission ends in 2014, and most of a promised $8 billion a year in military and development aid is likely to vanish. A still-weak army that relies on foreign training and back-up would be on its own in the fight against the Taliban.

Karzai's close advisers, including spokesman Aimal Faizi, have said they do not believe there is really a "zero option" of withdrawing all troops, and the US is trying to intimidate a poorer, weaker ally.

But US politicians, diplomats and analysts warn that after years of mostly outfoxing his foreign backers when the Afghan war was a top policy priority, Karzai may have severely miscalculated the mood in an economically strained US, and a White House distracted by other international crises from Syria to China.

Tensions between the United States and Afghanistan flared up further in the past few days after a Nato airstrike killed a young boy in Helmand province. The Afghan leader's office said that attack was a betrayal of a promise by US President Barack Obama that his forces would respect Afghan civilians as they do their own citizens.

At the weekend Karzai also accused the US of cutting off fuel supplies to the police and army in a bid to force him into signing the pact. The Nato-led coalition denied any halt in flows of diesel or gasoline vital to patrols and military operations against the Taliban.

"We are aware of a statement on the Afghan presidential website concerning issues with fuel provisions for the Afghan National Security Forces (ANSF)," spokesman David Simons said in an email. There has been no stoppage in the delivery of requested fuel and we continue to process all orders as soon as they are received from the ANSF."

According to the office of the Special Inspector General for Afghan Reconstruction, the American government paid more than $1.1 billion to fuel the Afghan army from 2007 to 2012, the Associated Press reported. It plans to spend more for fuel until 2018, but only if a security deal is signed.

Additional reporting by Mokhtar Amiri

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/dec/02/taliban-hamid-karzai-us-security-de