Tuesday, April 03, 2012
And how much did this cost us
Because nothing in Afghanistan is free and if it involves a Karzai you can bet we paid top dollar to get his approval.
After years of insisting that American forces end covert nighttime raids on Afghan homes, President Hamid Karzai’s government was close to completing a deal that would give the Afghan authorities legal oversight of the raids, while allowing American forces to retain a guiding role in conducting them, officials from both countries said Tuesday.A quiet transfer of funds to Karzai and his designees and we continue the death and dying to the same end if we left now, only the body count and the dollar amount get bigger.
The night raids’ deep unpopularity with the Afghan public has long put Mr. Karzai at odds with his American backers, who say the operations are among the most effective tools they have to combat the Taliban.
An agreement on the raids, after months of sometimes contentious negotiations, would allow Kabul and Washington to move toward completion of a broader pact that lays out the strategic relationship between the two countries after the official end of the NATO combat mission here in 2014. Afghan and American officials hope to have that broader agreement concluded in time for a NATO summit meeting planned for May in Chicago.
The deal that is nearing completion would give Afghan military forces a lead role in all the raids — officials say they already take part in most of them — and would also bring the operations under Afghan legal jurisdiction by requiring a court warrant within 48 hours of a raid in order to continue detention of any suspects, according to American and Afghan officials close to the negotiations.
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