U.S., Afghans sign pact to let troops stay

U.S. Ambassador James Cunningham (seated, left) and Afghan national security adviser Hanif Atmar (seated, right) sign the security agreement Tuesday at the presidential palace in Kabul as new leader Ashraf Ghani Ahmadzai (fourth from right, standing) and other officials observe.
U.S. Ambassador James Cunningham (seated, left) and Afghan national security adviser Hanif Atmar (seated, right) sign the security agreement Tuesday at the presidential palace in Kabul as new leader Ashraf Ghani Ahmadzai (fourth from right, standing) and other officials observe.

KABUL, Afghanistan -- Nearly a year after a long-term deal to keep U.S. troops in Afghanistan was derailed amid worsening relations, Afghanistan and the United States signed the security pact Tuesday.

The agreement allows 9,800 U.S. troops and about 2,000 NATO troops to remain in Afghanistan after the international combat mission formally ends Dec. 31. Their role will be to train and support Afghan security forces, but the pact also allows for U.S. special operations forces to conduct counterterrorism missions in the country.

The signing, in a televised ceremony at the presidential palace, fulfilled a campaign promise by the new Afghan president, Ashraf Ghani Ahmadzai, who was inaugurated the day before. As Ahmadzai watched, Ambassador James Cunningham signed for the United States, and the new Afghan national security adviser, Hanif Atmar, signed for Afghanistan.

After months of wrangling on the terms of the bilateral security agreement last year, former President Hamid Karzai ultimately refused to sign it, contributing to soured relations between the two countries.

In his inauguration speech Monday, Ahmadzai called for the healing of that relationship and for a new era of cooperation. On Tuesday, he also said the agreement had been signed "in accordance with our national interests," and said it would open the doors for a continuation of civilian and military aid to his government.

Noting that Western donors had promised Afghanistan $16 billion in economic aid, he said that Afghanistan and the West had "shared dangers and shared interests."

But he also addressed lingering Afghan sovereignty concerns, stressing that international forces would not be allowed to raid mosques or other sacred sites; foreign contractors would be subject to strict government regulation; and that both countries have the right to withdraw from the pact in two years.

After signing the pact in Kabul, Cunningham smiled and firmly embraced Atmar. Speaking later, he called it a historic agreement and said the endorsement of Afghan tribal leaders, who met to approve the pact last December, showed that "the people of Afghanistan placed a great stake in our enduring partnership."

In Washington, President Barack Obama hailed the agreement and said the United States was committed to supporting Afghanistan.

"The [agreement] reflects our continued commitment to support the new Afghan Unity Government, and we look forward to working with this new government to cement an enduring partnership that strengthens Afghan sovereignty, stability, unity, and prosperity, and that contributes to our shared goal of defeating al-Qaida and its extremist affiliates," he said in a statement.

Ahmadzai was joined onstage by his chief executive officer, Abdullah Abdullah. The two men spent the summer embroiled in a dispute over the results of June's presidential vote. But one of their few points of agreement was that the U.S. security deal should be signed.

On Tuesday, Atmar also signed an agreement with NATO to provide for the continued presence of non-American NATO troops after 2014.

Officials have said Afghanistan needs to bolster its security forces to fend off a threat from Taliban insurgents, who have attacked vulnerable districts and Afghan security forces since they took over security duties from foreign troops.

In his inauguration speech Monday, Ahmadzai called on the Taliban to join peace talks. But he also warned that the invitation should not be taken as a sign of weakness, and that his government would respond forcefully to any attacks on civilians.

The Taliban denounced the security pact as a "sinister" plot by the United States, and used it to launch its first propaganda assault on the Ahmadzai administration.

"With this action, the new staff of the presidential palace have proved their disloyalty to the religion and history of Afghanistan," said a Pashto-language statement posted on Twitter. The next post read: "Death to America!"

Officials hope the security pact will allow the U.S to prevent the country from descending into the kind of chaos that has plagued Iraq since the Pentagon's withdrawal there.

While Obama touted the Afghan accord as crucial to protecting progress in the fight against al-Qaida, he also has insisted that a similar pact with Iraq would have done little to stop the rise of the Islamic State militants now wreaking havoc there and in neighboring Syria.

"The only difference would be we'd have a bunch of troops on the ground that would be vulnerable," Obama said in August, shortly after authorizing airstrikes in Iraq. "And however many troops we had, we would have to now be reinforcing, I'd have to be protecting them, and we'd have a much bigger job."

The president and his advisers have repeatedly said they were left with no choice but to withdraw from Iraq. Under an agreement signed by former President George W. Bush, U.S. troops had to leave by the end of 2011 unless an extension was signed.

Negotiations over the terms of a new deal collapsed when it became clear that Iraq's parliament would not give American forces immunity from prosecution, as is typical of such agreements. Obama administration officials also rejected former Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's offer to sign an executive order granting Americans immunity.

But White House critics, as well as some former administration officials, have suggested that Obama put his desire to end the Iraq war ahead of concerns about the security vacuum the U.S. might leave behind. The president has repeatedly heralded the withdrawal of American forces as the fulfillment of his campaign pledge to bring the unpopular war to a close.

Vali Nasr, who served as a State Department adviser during Obama's first term, said, "The administration's leaning was to say we're going to leave, we really want to find all of the reason why we're able to leave Iraq." What's happened to Iraq since then, he said, appears to have affected the way the administration views the necessity of staying in Afghanistan.

"There's some motivation to avoid Afghanistan turning into a crisis of [Islamic State] magnitude," said Nasr, who is now dean of the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies.

But even before the rise of the Islamic State, the White House showed flexibility in trying to get the Afghan deal done. U.S. officials first warned their Afghan counterparts that if the security accord was not signed by the end of 2013, the Pentagon would have to start planning for a full withdrawal. When the year ended, the White House moved back the deadline, saying Karzai needed to sign off within weeks.

Karzai then surprised U.S. officials by saying he would not sign the accord and would instead leave that task for his successor. Ahmadzai signed the security agreement nearly one year after the White House's initial deadline.

The agreement provides a legal framework for the United States to keep about 9,800 troops in Afghanistan to train, advise and assist that country's national security forces after the current international combat mission ends Dec. 31. Obama announced earlier this year that he would cut the number of troops in half by the end of 2015 and leave only about 1,000 in a security office after the end of 2016, as his presidency comes to a close.

Some White House critics have questioned whether Obama's decision to publicly choreograph his plans to withdraw troops allows the extremists to simply wait the U.S. out.

"What good, really, is a [security agreement] that has an endpoint?" said Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz. "It's almost pointless."

Information for this article was contributed by Declan Walsh of The New York Times and by Julie Pace and Rahim Faiez of The Associated Press.

A Section on 10/01/2014

Upcoming Events