'Karzai almost totally dependent on Americans'

On Monday, Karzai summoned the commander of NATO forces in Afghanistan, General John Allen, and US Ambassador Ryan Crocker to warn them that civilian casualties in military operations threatened the pact, AFP reported.

On May 1, 2012, Washington and Kabul signed an agreement to extend the US military presence in Afghanistan to 2024.

Shortly after arriving in the war-torn country in an unannounced trip late at night on May 1, US President Barack Obama met Karzai, and both signed the deal that authorizes the presence of US troops for a period of 10 years after 2014, which was the original date agreed upon for the departure of all foreign combat troops from Afghanistan.

An interview with Edward Spannaus, legal affairs editor of the Executive Intelligence Review newsmagazine, to further talk regarding the issue.

What do you make of the timing of the Karzai's concerns? Don’t they come a decade of US atrocities and civilian massacres too late?

Spannaus: Well, yes and we are now looking at another decade of US presence in Afghanistan under the agreement that President Obama announced last week.

Even though he talked about withdrawing US troops, there will be a significant troop presence there at a cost of about 4 billion dollars a year for ten more years.

So we are looking at 40 billion dollars. Special Operations Forces under the guise of training and advising will be there and that also you have an agreement on the nighttime raids.

So there is no withdrawal taking place. We are looking at another ten years when in fact we should have gotten out of there long ago; we should have never actually been in there.

Could raising concerns by Karzai of civilian casualties help ally the opposition to the signing of this strategic pact by both members of the Afghan parliament and the general population?

Spannaus: I doubt it. I doubt it very much because the mere fact of the continued US presence there is destabilizing; it is destabilizing for Afghanistan and it is destabilizing for the US military as well.

And I do not think anything there can be done under these conditions, when you are dealing with a counterinsurgency, when you do not really know who is the enemy, who is not the enemy, everybody looks like the enemy.

The very fact of the US presence there increases the opposition, increases the insurgency.

In fact, the two heads of the intelligence committees in the US Congress, Senator Feinstein and Congressman Mike Rodgers, said over the weekend that the Taliban is stronger now than it was when the US troops began the surge.

So it has a counterproductive effect that the more you do, the more you engender a reaction against you in these kinds of situations and I think it does not have wide acceptance in the US Congress and it certainly will not have acceptance in the Afghanistan Parliament.

Karzai has threatened that the strategic pact will be at risk if US-led forces continue to kill civilians. Is Karzai even in the position to take such measures now that the pact has already been signed?

Spannaus: Well, Karzai is in a very weak position. His staying in power really is dependent on the US. He does not have all that much support within the Afghanistan population which is of course very fractured; it is tribal, very factionalized.

He depends on the US. So the demands that he makes... he is in a very weak position to make those demands because without the US, I do not think he would last in power very long.