Security pact snag: ‘Afghan government can’t afford to let the US lead the scene’

[unhappycamper]

http://rt.com/op-edge/security-pact-afghanistan-usa-717/



While the US is pushing Afghan President Hamid Karzai to sign a security pact that would extend its military presence in the country, President Karzai has confirmed he is engaged in secret talks with the Taliban, which reportedly wants to join the Afghanistan peace process.

Security pact snag: ‘Afghan government can’t afford to let the US lead the scene’
Published time: February 05, 2014 15:09

RT: Washington has said it has always been supportive of direct talks between Afghanistan and the Taliban. Does this mean that 10 years of war have been in vain?

Frank Ledwidge: All this is a testament to the total strategic illiteracy of the whole campaign from the start. We had a military campaign, really quite savage brutality over the last 12 years, completely unhinged and unconnected to any political process. Now the Taliban groups are very conversant with the need to link and to mesh and to marry politics with military action and they play this game extremely well. And now what happened is we are right at the end of the campaign, Karzai and his extremely corrupt government are being pushed to the wire and the pressure is all coming from the other side.

RT: Despite little success so far, Afghanistan is hopeful the talks will be successful. But at what cost would a deal come?

FL: The cost really is to the credibility of primarily thousands of Afghans who have been killed in these misconceived military operations. But the political cost now is really the balance of that is tipping very much against the US. There is no way that the Americans are going to pull out of Afghanistan, they can’t leave the country without military cover. That would lead to the kind of situation we had in 2001, actually the more appropriate comparison is 1979. And no one wants that to happen.