Did a Karzai-Obama Rift Mar the President’s visit to Afghanistan?

[unhappycamper]

http://www.juancole.com/2014/05/karzai-presidents-afghanistan.html

Did a Karzai-Obama Rift Mar the President’s visit to Afghanistan?
By Juan Cole | May. 27, 2014

President Obama made a surprise trip to Afghanistan on Monday, for Memorial Day. But while the main impetus for his trip was to honor US troops for their service there, he appears to have also tried to arrange a meeting with Afghanistan President Hamid Karzai. He issued an invitation for Karzai to join him at Bagram Air Base, but Karzai declined. I haven’t been able to find any sources I trust that confirm that Karzai was offended by being summoned to Bagram.

Obama wanted to meet with Karzai because the latter refuses to sign the Bilateral Security Agreement, which would lend a legal framework to the presence of a small contingent of US troops after Dec. 31. Without the BSA, US troops engaged in fighting with the Taliban could be charged with war crimes, since the UN Security Council will cease issuing permissions for international use of force in Afghanistan.

Presidential candidate and Karzai’s likely successor, Abdallah Abdallah, has said that he will sign the BSA the minute he is sworn in.

Tolo news in Afghanistan in Dari Persian noted: “Prior to this, the US foreign secretary and the security national advisor of Obama had come to Afghanistan and held talks about the security pact. However, the talks did not apparently have the desirable results.” (h/t BBC Monitoring)


--

(animated gif here. Vietnam fades to Afghanistan fades to Vietnam.....)

We have lost over 2320 military personnel and 52 weeks times $2 billion a week times 52 weeks times 13 years. Declare Victory and leave.

[KoKo]

1. Recommend...Interesting that lates news is we will keep 10,000 troops in until

end of 2016. So...it sounds like a deal was made with Karzai at the last minute after this report.

Maybe they are hoping to work out a deal with Karzai's replacement if he wins the election for some kind of agreement that the soldiers remaining won't be prosecuted for war crimes?

[bemildred]

2. It is not a done deal.

Karzai says he won't sign the SOFA. "We" are confident the next guy will. If the next guy doesn't agree, we are still leaving this year. No SOFA, we still leave.

Edit: I would think they would have to start moving troops out about now to be all out by the end of the year, transportation issues being what they are in Afghanistan. Hence this may just be cover for beginning the withdrawal, with a perhaps helping of keeping the door open.