Pullout price: Karzai to wrestle Obama for troops, aid

Pullout price: Karzai to wrestle Obama for troops, aid.(RT).Imminent pullout of US troops from Afghanistan in 2014 is likely to place Afghan President Hamid Karzai between a rock and a hard place. During talks in Washington he is to bargain over whether he would seek support elsewhere in China and Iran.
­Karzai is meeting US President Barack Obama on Friday for what is expected to be tough negotiations over his country’s future. Washington is planning to considerably reduce the number of its troops deployed in the country from the current 66,000 to as few as 2,000 to 6,000. A zero-presence option is also on the table.
Afghanistan’s own security forces, which the US pledged to train and equip before withdrawal, may not be prepared to take full responsibility. This would be especially true if the US refuses to back the Afghans with air and artillery support during operations and would conduct its own independent missions, focusing on drone strikes like in Pakistan.
“These talks are for the president and his national security principals to let Afghanistan’s President Karzai down as softly as they can, to let him know that unfortunately they are not going to make up on their promise to completely train up the Afghan military and police before the US troops leave,” Hillary Mann Leverett, the CEO of STRATEGA political risk consultancy, told RT.
American reluctance to support Karzai the way it did for 11 years is understandable. The war is unpopular among America’s European allies and at home. It takes troops lives, including those lost to green-on-blue attacks, costs too much in the time of economic slowdown and gives no clear profit to Americans, says Ari Rutenberg, contributor of The Daily Banter independent political site.
The tension is aggravated by the perception of Karzai and his government as corrupt and inefficient. Leaving him to deal with his domestic problems while maintaining a smaller footprint, which would be enough to contain Iran and China, is a tempting course of action.
Kabul is at risk of losing control of a greater portion of Afghanistan territory to Taliban militants and Al-Qaeda-affiliated fighters. The country went through a similar period of warlord-driven disarray following the 1989 Soviet withdrawal and until Taliban ultimately took over.
“Looking back over the history of Afghanistan, many great powers have broken their teeth trying to govern that particular part of the world and I don’t think that we’ve done any better job than of any of the previous invading powers had,” Rutenberg believes. “I think that unfortunately after 11 years of war if we were to leave, it would create a power vacuum and probably leave them much of a situation we found them in 2001.”Hmmm......"We've come a long way towards a shared goal of establishing a nation that you and we can be proud of, one that never again becomes a safe haven for terrorism.".Karzai, Ahmadinejad and Asif Ali Zardari..great combination against 'terrorism'.
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