Karzai demands release of all inmates at Guantanamo as condition for signing security pact

[jsr]

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/26/world/asia/obamas-national-security-adviser-meets-with-karzai.html

U.S. Official Gives Karzai an Ultimatum on Signing Security Pact
By ROD NORDLAND

KABUL, Afghanistan — President Obama’s national security adviser, Susan E. Rice, imposed an ultimatum on President Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan on Monday, telling him to stop his delay in signing a security agreement or potentially face the complete and final pullout of American troops by the end of 2014, according to American and Afghan officials.

But while Mr. Karzai was said to have assured her he would sign the deal at some point, he gave no time frame for it. And over dinner at the presidential palace in Kabul, he later insisted on difficult new conditions as well, including the release of all inmates at the American prison camp at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, adding to the perception of crisis between the two nations, officials from both countries said.

“Ambassador Rice reiterated that, without a prompt signature, the U.S. would have no choice but to initiate planning for a post-2014 future in which there would be no U.S. or NATO troop presence in Afghanistan,” according to a summary of the meeting released by the White House.

The meeting comes a day after Mr. Karzai rejected a recommendation from his own handpicked assembly of Afghan leadership figures, a loya jirga, that by year’s end he should sign the bilateral security agreement, which would allow for an extended American military presence in Afghanistan after 2014. Mr. Karzai told the loya jirga that he wanted to wait to sign it until after the Afghan presidential elections next April, while continuing to negotiate with the Americans.

[mr_hat]

1. The longer he can stay in power,

the more he can skim. And we know he will.

[sabrina 1]

7. Surely you are not a supporter of that medieval stain on this country?

Shut it DOWN. It will go down in history as one of the most cruel, egregious, unlawful gulags in recent history.

And KUDOS to Karzai for demanding the release of those innocent people who were kidnapped and tortured and kept without CHARGES OR TRIAL for all these years.

It should make any decent person sick to their stomach to know what their government has done to these poor people.

[polly7]

10. +1000. nt.

[itsrobert]

2. How about if we just bring Hamid Karzai to where the prisoners are at

and lock him up too?

[JimboBillyBubbaBob]

3. Karzai been hitting...

...the opium crop again!

[sabrina 1]

9. Karzai is RIGHT to demand the release of those unfortunate people. Too bad more of our

own elected officials don't have the courage to demand it. It is a disgrace that this gulag exists in OUR NAME with so little resistance from the 'land of the free'. Shameful. I hope he holds firm and that others join him in that demand.

[NuclearDem]

12. Dah, forget it. Some foreign guy thumbed his nose at a Democratic administration.

All progressive principles about war and illegal imprisonment have to go by the way side now.

[sabrina 1]

13. Sickening isn't it? To find out that the people you thought actually were opposed to Bush's war

crimes, were only using them for political purposes. This has been a very educational few years for me.

I guess I was naive, I really thought we on the left actually cared about human rights.

But watch how they will do a complete flip flop if Obama agrees with Karzai and succeeds in closing down that stain on this country. Suddenly they will be cheering for human rights once again and slamming anyone who points out the shameful hypocrisy.

If we are to believe this president, he WANTS to do what Karzai is demanding. In some ways Obama's 'supporters' do him more harm than his enemies. IF he meant everything he said but is moving slowly and carefully, these 'supporters' jumping in to support human rights abuses on his behalf, could not be doing him more harm if they tried.

That place needs to be emptied of all detainees and then fumigated to rid it of the blood and stench of brutality emanating from it each day that it exists. And that WILL happen one day, far too late for those whose human rights have been so abused, for those innocents who have died and were brutally tortured there.

We should be ashamed. But that would require a sense of justice which at one time I thought existed at least in half the population. Now, sadly that half appears to put politics above all else.

[KoKo]

14. Absolutely! RECOMMEND!

[bluestate10]

4. Within the year the USA will be able to launch a Drone from a ship at sea

and have it take out al quida and or Taliban targets and safely return to the ship from which it was launched. Except for protecting some elements on Afghan society, we won't need a single troop in Afghanistan.

[Swede Atlanta]

5. Will we never learn from history.....

unfortunately I do not believe Afghanistan can become a "nation" as we know them. I wish it weren't true. It is because of their intense tribalism and Islamic hatred of all things foreign. I am not saying that all Muslims are xenophobic but I believe in the case of Afghanistan there is a strong preference for keeping all things foreign away.

And probably for good reason. In most recent memory the British used Afghanistan as a buffer between their arch enemy Russia and their crown jewel, India. The Russians tried it and failed. Why would we think we could be successful?

We need to get out NOW. It will mean the society will lapse back into chaos and hate of women and anything other than white Muslim men in their tribal garb. No more education for girls or women, etc. But we cannot fix the world.

We can kill anyone we consider a threat with a drone. I consider indiscriminate drone attacks and those with collateral damage immoral but we can if we want. So if we are going to prosecute a war let's get our men and women out of there and let the chips fall where they may.

I wish I saw some other future for Afghanistan but I see none.

[Luminous Animal]

8. There are billions of $$$$$$ under them thar opium fields and that is why

we will not leave. But foreign invasion created the chaos we see today... first the Russians and then us.

Astonishing Pictures of Afghanistan From Before The Wars

http://www.businessinsider.com/astonishing-photos-of-prewar-afghanistan-show-everyday-life-in-peaceful-kabul-2013-2

[polly7]

11. Always makes me sad to see these pictures.

It makes you wonder what that country and its people could have been like and accomplished were it not for the bloodthirsty need to invade and pillage by others.

[KoKo]

15. +1, Polly!

[sabrina 1]

17. It once was a peaceful and progressive country. Before the 'great' super powers decided to use it as

a chess board. Back in the 'sixties people from Europe eg, used to go there on their honeymoon eg.

But decades of war caused the rise of the most violent and extreme elements to rise to power after the super powers left leaving behind a shattered nation.

If ANY country demonstrates the evil of war and what it can do to a nation in a few decades, Afghanistan is a perfect example. Women used to work as doctors, teachers, wear western clothes etc.

But no one currently living in Afghanistan now has ever exerienced anything but war. I read somewhere that nearly every citizen of that country has suffered losses of loved ones, parents, siblings, children and nearly everyone has suffered an injury of some kind.

I hate War. It is a sign of FAILURE.

[polly7]

18. I was actually surprised the first time I saw the pictures.

I hadn't known much about Afghanistan ... and to hear that it was so progressive and peaceful is heartbreaking. I'm so glad people here have pointed this out, there've been too many posts saying how backward and hopeless it is, implying it's always been that way and that ... somehow, foreign military presence has been a help for these people.

Yes, war is an atrocity ... I hate it with a red-hot passion. I read a few years ago that up to 70% of the people there suffer from some sort of mental condition, especially the children - with ptsd, depression, anxiety, etc., and that there were very, very few mental health professionals to even help them.

I just found mention of it here:

Communal psychological wounds--what medical anthropologist Arthur Kleinman has called "social suffering"--permeate the lives of survivors scraping by in unimaginable poverty amid collapsed infrastructure, the common afterbirth of modern combat. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, between 30 and 70 percent of people who have lived in war zones bear the scars of post-traumatic stress disorder and depression.

They are people like Farida, a wasted mother of three from northern Afghanistan. She was 2 years old when the mujahideen drove Afghanistan's communist government out of Kabul and plunged the country into fratricide. She was 6 when Taliban tanks rolled into Khanabad, her hometown of dusty poplar alleys. She was 11 when a series of U.S. air raids pummeled the town, targeting Taliban fortifications and killing nearly 150 civilians. Soon a ragtag mujahideen army once more dragged its howitzers through town, executing Taliban fighters who had not fled in time. Five years later, the Taliban were back. There were ambushes, beheadings, roadside bombs, acts of unspeakable brutality. By the time she was 20, Farida could no longer summon the energy to boil rice for dinner or pin wet laundry to the lines that sagged along the hand-slapped mud walls of her family compound. Her days brought tidal surges of panic attacks. Her nights brought no sleep. Headaches tormented her. The shrill voices of her three small children sawed through her skull. She could not eat. Inside her farmhouse, Farida found no peace.

I met Farida at one of Afghanistan's few psychiatric clinics, in Mazar-e-Sharif, a day's journey from Khanabad. Her husband had scraped together some $50 for transportation and treatment to take her there. She sat in a stuffy third-floor room on some rug-covered planks fixed to a metal frame that passed for a cot, her arms folded around her knees, rocking lightly. Her old calico dress, now several sizes too large, hung off her wasted shoulders. Flies landed on her twig-like collarbones. Farida just rocked.

"Panic attacks and depression," explained Mohammad Nader Alemi, the clinic's owner and head doctor. "And conversion disorder." Most of Alemi's clients--more than 6,000 since he opened his hospital seven years ago--suffer from the same symptoms, all common manifestations of mental trauma.

http://pulitzercenter.org/reporting/afghanistan-post-traumatic-stress-disorder-mental-health-care-genocide-violence

The physical and mental injury suffered by these people for so many years is nearly too horrible to even imagine. Yes, it's absolutely been a failure.

[KoKo]

16. And, our work against the Russians allowed our CIA in there to lay

the groundwork with bin Laden and the rest to cause the rest.

[NuclearDem]

6. Good, don't sign the damn security agreement.

And release the Gitmo prisoners anyway. No occupations or gulags.