Regrets from General David Petraeus and his operations chief weren't enough to calm an international firestorm over the deaths of nine Afghan boys killed by NATO helicopters. So Defense Secretary Robert Gates made a third apology to Afghan President Hamid Karzai -- in person. Oh, and by the way: he let it be known that the U.S. wouldn't mind staying in Afghanistan forever. If the Afghans want us to, of course.
Karzai rejected Petraeus' apology and only reluctantly accepted Gates', saying "Afghans fail to understand" how civilians continue to die at NATO hands nearly ten years after the war started. Gates quickly reminded Karzai that "80 percent" of civilian deaths are attributable to the Taliban, not the U.S.-led coalition.
But hundreds of Afghans have demonstrated in Kabul against the deaths of the boys in Kunar Province. Karzai reminded Gates during a mutual press conference that the U.S. and Afghanistan have held "multiple meetings" about taking greater care to prevent civilian deaths. Afghans "want it not reduced; they want it stopped," he said.
That made it awkward timing for Gates to announce that the U.S. will send a delegation to Afghanistan next week to negotiate a "strategic partnership" between the two countries. It's been clear for months that the U.S. will seek to keep some troops in Afghanistan beyond 2014, the date NATO and Karzai decided should complete a transition to full Afghan control over combat operations. But Gates had yet to make any such request explicit.
Now, Gates said, "if the Afghan people and the Afghan government are interested," the U.S. is officially "open to the possibility of having some presence here in terms of training and assistance." The U.S. has "no interest in permanent bases," of course, but perhaps it could make "use of facilities made available to us by the Afghan government" to keep training up Afghan soldiers and cops.
Guess who didn't have a response to that proposal? Karzai pronounced himself bullish instead on the Afghan security forces' morale and drive to secure their own country. "Afghanistan is our country and we will have to protect it," he said, "even if it is with our bare hands."
If the U.S. can present a post-2014 presence in Afghanistan in the context of backstopping the Afghan forces, then maybe it can get Karzai on board. Karzai has already backed down on plans to kick out private security contractors, including, reportedly, Blackwater's people. And it's doubtful that the U.S. would send a negotiating team to Afghanistan just to be rebuked.
Afghan anger at civilian casualties has changed U.S. behavior in the past. It got Petraeus' predecessors, Generals Stanley McChrystal and David McKiernan, to restrict the use of offensive air strikes. But Petraeus has restored the air war, launching 33,000 close air support sorties in 2010, a 20 percent increase from the previous year. United Nations casualty statistics affirm that the U.S. kills far fewer Afghans than insurgents do, even despite the air strikes, special operations forces raids and the occasional destruction of villages the Taliban converts into bomb fields.
But in those cases, the U.S. isn't asking Karzai for anything. And if the U.S. wants to stay in Afghanistan, then Karzai surely knows his patrons aren't really "asking," either. But Afghans surely know that the longer the U.S. stays, the more Afghan civilians will die -- just as a necessary consequence from protracted warfare, not because the U.S. wants such a thing to happen. Counterterrorism, after all, is the most likely rationale for the U.S. to stay in Afghanistan after 2014. And it's Karzai who has to deal with Afghan anger.
Karzai may ultimately acquiesce -- so long as the U.S. remains in Afghanistan, he's not getting overthrown -- but at the potential cost of losing what popular legitimacy he enjoys. As a barometer of where Afghans' sentiments are, it says a lot that Karzai furiously denounces the U.S. for civilian deaths while seeking a peace deal with the Taliban insurgents who kill way more innocents. And that's not a public that wants the U.S. to stay indefinitely, no matter how many apologies Gates issues.
Photo: U.S. Navy
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