Bergdahl's release by Taliban signals new US political battle

Bowe Bergdahl's release by Taliban signals new US political battle

Barack Obama under fire from Republicans who claim he has 'negotiated with terrorists' in swap deal with the Taliban

Spencer Ackerman in New York

Now begins the fight over Bowe Bergdahl – an unlikely, if long-telegraphed, struggle that speaks to fundamental foreign policy differences between Barack Obama and his critics.

The 28-year old army sergeant, captured by the Taliban in 2009 and now in US custody, is not yet home in Idaho, as he is being examined by US personnel at Bagram airfield. Neither are the five men – Mohammad Fazl, Mullah Norullah Noori, Mohammed Nabi, Khairullah Khairkhwa, and Abdul Haq Wasiq – the Taliban traded for Bergdahl.

A US defence official confirmed that the Taliban leaders left Guantanamo Bay around 2pm on Saturday, in the custody of the Qatari officials who are said to have brokered the trade. It is not clear if the five Talibs will go free outright: Obama said vaguely the Qataris provided "assurances" about protecting US security interests.

But already, acrimony has mixed into what Bergdahl's mother tearfully called "a good day" during a brief evening Rose Garden statement with president Obama.

The chairman of the House intelligence committee, Republican Mike Rogers of Michigan, said he was "extremely troubled" by the trade, which he called a "negotiat[ion] with terrorists" that will incentivise further US troop captures. The top Republicans on the House and Senate armed services committees said "trading five senior Taliban leaders from detention in Guantanamo Bay for Bergdahl's release may have consequences for the rest of our forces and all Americans." All said they were relieved by the end of Bergdahl's captivity.

The Obama administration has sought Bergdahl's release for years. It's also sought, without success, what Obama in 2012 called a "negotiated peace" with the Taliban to end the Afghanistan war. In both cases, the Taliban made clear that they wanted their five members released from Guantanamo as a sign of good faith. Congressional Republicans have equally made clear their deep reservations about the wisdom of any such trade.

Bergdahl has now been freed. Far less clear is whether the prisoner trade augurs a breakthrough in the stillborn US-Taliban diplomacy, laundered through Qatar. In his Rose Garden remarks, Obama referred to his support for an "Afghan-led process of reconciliation," suggesting that the US, having been burned repeatedly on Taliban talks, does not place much faith in reviving them.

"The Taliban suspended direct talks in 2012 and we have not resumed them," the defence official said.

Trading Bergdahl for five Afghan detainees at Guantanamo fits the mould of Obama's foreign policy. It's what he recently called hitting singles and doubles: the return of the only US prisoner of war in America's longest conflict in exchange for five detainees the administration has now tacitly argued are no great threat. If there is no administration bluff underway and the Taliban are not about to rekindle peace talks, it is also less valuable a trade than a brokered end to the war would offer.

Obama hinted as much, obliquely, in his Rose Garden remarks, by saying he was "able" to thank the Qatari government for its aid in the Bergdahl trade "earlier this week." It's possible the deal was in the works before Obama said at the White House on Tuesday that 21st century wars end "with decisive blows against our adversaries, transitions to elected governments, security forces who take the lead and ultimately full responsibility." Not necessarily, in other words, with negotiations.

The deal also showed a typical Obama impatience with the idea, as expressed by his GOP congressional critics on Saturday, that negotiating with "terrorists" and Guantanamo detainee swaps are beyond the pale of sensible national security choices.

Administration officials have long rolled their eyes at that contention, and rattled off examples of Ronald Reagan trading arms for hostages with hated Iran and the litany of Israeli prisoner swaps with Hamas and Hezbollah, all examples designed to hit a nerve with their conservative opposition. From their perspective, foreclosing on a tangible achievement like Bergdahl's freedom to preserve a rhetorical purity against negotiating with terrorists – which is a white lie – is foreign policy malpractice.

It's also possible that the administration may seek to preserve the line, another white lie. "If the Qataris were indeed involved, it allows the US to maintain its position of not negotiating with terrorists and bypasses Pakistan," said Shuja Nawaz, a South Asia scholar at the Atlantic Council.

Critics like Rogers are certain to find that too clever by half. The Republican armed services committee leadership, representative Buck McKeon of California and senator James Inhofe of Oklahoma, additionally blasted Obama for "clearly violating laws" requiring a month's notice to Congress before releasing anyone from Guantanamo.

The Obama administration hates the fact that Congress legislated restrictions on their Guantanamo authority, believing it to be a politicization of national security, but it simply broke the law when it saw an opportunity. It is gambling that no one will care during the enthusiasm over Bergdahl's return.

Whether or not the trade encourages the hostage taking of Americans by terrorists seeking to free their comrades is an empirical question that will vindicate either Obama or his critics. Less debatable is the negligible impact that Bergdahl's release has on the fate of the war that led to his captivity.

Obama this week announced a twilight phase to the war that will consume the next two years, during which the US will significantly diminish its force presence and its residual combat operations. That will happen whatever the Taliban do. Should Rogers, McKeon and Inhofe be right that the five Taliban members traded for Bergdahl are dangerous men, Obama has tacitly decided that they're no longer an American problem.

"The Afghan reconciliation will now be in Afghan hands," Nawaz said, "so I do not see this giving the United States any edge as it exits the fighting in the country."

There has been no "decisive blow" against the Taliban, contrary to Obama's Tuesday blandishment. There is now only a process of turgid, managed withdrawal from a war that has exhausted America, a war Obama has been skeptical about waging even as he escalated it, a war the Republicans has been wary of embracing beyond as a cudgel to call Obama weak. The coming debate over Bergdahl is likely to obscure it, but were this late-war dynamic not in place, Bergdahl would still be a prisoner.

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jun/01/barack-obama-under-fire-over-bowe-bergdahl-taliban-deal