Karzai Must Approve of U.S. Military Operations?
BY Herschel Smith14 years, 12 months ago
Glenn Reynolds recently posted a link to a interesting report from an embed by Joe Pappalardo with Popular Mechanics. The reader should take the several minutes required to read the report, and assuming that this obtains, I won’t rehearse the report here, except for one part that jumped off of the page at me because I have followed it.
More information comes in and planning is done on the fly around the horseshoe table: 10th Mountain division troops are en route. They will find and secure a landing zone for the Chinooks. To get a jump on the process, the choppers with the Special Operations troops will predeploy at another Forward Operating Base closer to the target mountain. It’s a good plan, but it needs to be backed with maps and permission from a brigadier general in Bagram Air Base, where the brass keeps an eye on operations and seeks stamps of approval for them from Afghan president Hamid Karzai’s personal staff.
Okay, I want to know exactly what this paragraph means? Hamid Karzai had previously wanted a Status of Forces Agreement with the U.S. similar to the Iraq SOFA, a plan I called a Blunder of Colossal Proportions if it happened. Karzai has requested operational, strategic and tactical control over U.S. troops, an eventuality that would essentially mean that it’s best simply to stand down and deploy back to the states. Campaign over.
Remember that Karzai is the one who said to Mullah Omar that “A few days ago I pleaded with the leader of the Taliban, telling him ‘My brother, my dear, come back to your homeland. Come back and work for peace, for the good of the Afghan people. Stop this business of brothers killing brothers’.”
Are we seeking approval for specific military operations from Hamid Karzai or his staff? If so, under what legal framework? Why are we doing this? Has this caused any lethargy to enter the campaign because [a] this permission was delayed, or [b] this permission was not forthcoming? Who has sought this approval – NATO forces, U.S. forces under the control of NATO, or U.S. forces only under the command of CENTCOM? Who, very specifically, has ordered that the U.S. seek permission for military operations from Karzai’s office?
We need answers to these and more questions concerning this troubling revelation.
No comments yet.
RSS feed for comments on this post. TrackBack URL
Leave a comment