This is classic. In both of these stories below you can see a dramatic change from the original hardline stance of Obama and Karzai on this stuff. I have mentioned in past blog posts on how both disbanding of PSC’s and troop withdrawals should not be based on some unrealistic timeline. Instead, they should be based on progress and reality on the ground. And guess what? The disbanding of PSC’s by December has changed now to ‘disbanding in stages’, and the July 2011 troop withdrawal date has switched to 2014 for a withdrawal. lol Talk about ‘moving the Goal Post’?-Matt
Afghan security companies to disband in stages
Obama officials moving away from 2011 Afghan date
Afghan security companies to disband in stages
By KATHARINE HOURELD
Wed Nov 10, 2010
KABUL, Afghanistan – After weeks of negotiations, Afghan officials and foreign diplomats have agreed that a shutdown of private security companies in Afghanistan will have to be carried out in several stages, two officials familiar with the talks said Wednesday.
The development indicates a possible compromise over the controversial issue, which has occupied top international diplomats and Afghan officials since President Hamid Karzai in August ordered the closure of private companies that provide security guards in the country.
At the time, Karzai said private security companies would be replaced by Afghan security forces.
But he later backed away from a Dec. 17 deadline for the shutdown, after diplomats said the move threatens billions of dollars worth of reconstruction projects. Up to 40,000 private guards work in Afghanistan, mostly guarding embassies, military convoys and development projects.
An Afghan and a foreign official familiar with the negotiations said Wednesday the two sides now agree the shutdown should be gradual. They said sticking points remain, such as who would be guarding military convoys.
The government must come up with a proposal in five days on the phased shutdown, they also said. Both officials spoke on condition of anonymity because the negotiations are still ongoing.
Many companies on contracts with the U.S. Agency for International Development have said they can’t insure their staff without private guards.
“We don’t have enough police to replace all the security companies in Afghanistan,” said Halal Uddih Halal, a former deputy interior minister and current lawmaker. “If we want to replace private security guards with our police, first we must create an atmosphere of trust.”
There have been several incidents where Afghan army and police have turned their weapons on foreign troops and international organizations do not trust them.
Afghans fear that security guards, once out of a job, could join the insurgency unless they find alternative livelihoods. Insurgents may also seek to pay them for information about the places they previously guarded.
Currently, many security guards are recruits who graduated from police or army training then deserted to work in the private sector for higher wages — one reason Karzai wants to close the companies down.
Halal also said some police would have to be retrained and re-equipped if they were to take over private security jobs.
Karzai also showed flexibility after Afghan security officials explained to the president that replacing the private guards would affect combat operations, said an Afghan official with knowledge of the negotiations.
One draft proposal shown to The Associated Press by a foreign official suggests that for some projects, security guards could be vetted by the Interior Ministry.
If cleared, they would join the government-run Afghan Public Protection Force, or APPF. A department within the ministry would be responsible for the APPF and would assign the force to development companies, which would then pay their salaries.
The APPF now is mainly drawn from local village fighters with little if any training and is considered less professional than the Afghan National Police, which in turn is believed to be poorly trained and largely corrupt.
Afghan government and were not available for comment.
Caitlin Hayden, a spokeswoman for the U.S. Embassy in Kabul, said the talks chaired by the Afghan government have been “collaborative, cooperative and constructive throughout and we look forward to continuing to work together to implement the president’s decree.”
The draft also suggested that other private security guards would be absorbed into the Afghan National Police.
The officials said that guards who would fall under the Ministry of Interior’s control but were found to have previously deserted from the police, would first have to finish their initial service. It’s also unclear if the guards would accept the lower wages paid to the national security forces, the Afghan official said.
The international community also wants infrastructure and development projects in the volatile south and east to be exempted from the closure order and a case-by-case review for future projects. The Afghan government is reluctant to accept such a proposal because it does not want to shut down some companies and leave others operating, the Afghan official said.
Story here.
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Obama officials moving away from 2011 Afghan date
By Nancy A. Youssef
November 10, 2010
WASHINGTON — The Obama administration has decided to begin publicly walking away from what it once touted as key deadlines in the war in Afghanistan in an effort to de-emphasize President Barack Obama’s pledge that he’d begin withdrawing U.S. forces in July 2011, administration and military officials have told McClatchy.
The new policy will be on display next week during a conference of NATO countries in Lisbon, Portugal, where the administration hopes to introduce a timeline that calls for the withdrawal of U.S. and NATO forces from Afghanistan by 2014, the year when Afghan President Hamid Karzai once said Afghan troops could provide their own security, three senior officials told McClatchy, along with others speaking anonymously as a matter of policy.
The Pentagon also has decided not to announce specific dates for handing security responsibility for several Afghan provinces to local officials and instead intends to work out a more vague definition of transition when it meets with its NATO allies.
What a year ago had been touted as an extensive December review of the strategy now also will be less expansive and will offer no major changes in strategy, the officials told McClatchy. So far, the U.S. Central Command, the military division that oversees Afghanistan operations, hasn’t submitted any kind of withdrawal order for forces for the July deadline, two of those officials told McClatchy.
The shift already has begun privately and came in part because U.S. officials realized that conditions in Afghanistan were unlikely to allow a speedy withdrawal.
“During our assessments, we looked at if we continue to move forward at this pace, how long before we can fully transition to the Afghans? And we found that we cannot fully transition to the Afghans by July 2011,” said one senior administration official. “So we felt we couldn’t focus on July 2011 but the period it will take to make the full transition.”
Another official said the administration also realized in contacts with Pakistani officials that the Pakistanis had concluded wrongly that July 2011 would mark the beginning of the end of U.S. military operations in Afghanistan.
That perception, one Pentagon adviser said, has convinced Pakistan’s military — which is key to preventing Taliban sympathizers from infiltrating Afghanistan — to continue to press for a political settlement instead of military action.
“This administration now understands that it cannot shift Pakistani approaches to safeguarding its interests in Afghanistan with this date being perceived as a walk-away date,” the adviser said.
Last week’s midterm elections also have eased pressure on the Obama administration to begin an early withdrawal. Earlier this year, some Democrats in Congress pressed to cut off funding for Afghanistan operations. With Republicans in control of the House of Representatives beginning in January, however, there’ll be less push for a drawdown. The incoming House Armed Services chairman, Rep. Howard “Buck” McKeon, R-Calif., told Reuters last week that he opposed setting the date.
The White House vehemently denies that there is any change in policy. “The president has been crystal clear that we will begin drawing down troops in July of 2011. There is absolutely no change to that policy,” said Tommy Vietor, a White House spokesman.
On Tuesday, a White House official who spoke with reporters in a conference call arranged to discuss the December review, said the administration might withdraw some troops next July and may hand some communities over to Afghan authorities. But he said a withdrawal from Afghanistan could take “years,” depending on the capability of the Afghan national security forces.
He also said the December review would measure progress in eight areas, though he declined to specify what those are. Congress will get a report by early next year, but Army Gen. David Petraeus, the commander of U.S.-led international forces in Afghanistan, will not testify.
“This is designed to be an inside the administration perspective,” he said, adding it will “set the policymaking calendar” for the Obama administration’s first six months of next year.
De-emphasizing deadlines also allows the administration greater flexibility in responding to conditions in Afghanistan, officials said.
While the Taliban are facing increasing coalition airstrikes, they have no driving incentive to negotiate with an unpopular government. Officials here quietly worry that while they, too, are seeing some drops in violence and the Taliban’s hold in pockets of Afghanistan, those limited improvements aren’t leading to better governance.
A U.N. report issued in August showed that civilian casualties rose 31 percent during the first half of the year compared with the previous year, 76 percent were caused by the Taliban, it said. So far, more than 400 U.S. troops have been killed this year.
Many officials here privately worry that talk of a withdrawal without results will cost the military credibility, with Americans and Afghans alike.
“What we ultimately need in Afghanistan is good governance,” said one senior military officer. “Right now there is a gap” between security gains and governance.
Christopher Preble, the director for foreign policy studies at the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank in Washington, said he’s not surprised that the scope of the December review has narrowed and that Obama administration officials are no longer highlighting the July 2011 date.
“The very players who were arguing so strenuously for a deepening of our involvement in Afghanistan a year ago are unlikely to now declare that their earlier recommendations were faulty,” he said.
Story here.