The death of Osama bin Laden is reinforcing calls for a quicker pullout of U.S. troops from Afghanistan and strengthening pressure to end America's longest war by finding a political settlement with the resilient Taliban insurgency.
The death of Osama bin Laden is reinforcing calls for a quicker pullout
of
U.S.
troops from
Afghanistan
and
strengthening pressure to end
America
's
longest war by finding a political settlement with the resilient Taliban
insurgency.
In his first reaction on Monday, Afghan President Hamid Karzai exhorted the
Taliban to open peace negotiations and said that bin Laden's killing near the
Pakistani capital Islamabad vindicated the Afghan government's growing
opposition to U.S.-led combat operations in the Afghan countryside.
(This story and related background material will be available on The Wall
Street Journal website, WSJ.com.)
"Once again I call on NATO to say that the war on terror is not in
Afghanistan
. Osama
was not in
Afghanistan
: they
found him in
Pakistan
,"
Karzai said. "The war on terror is not in Afghan villages, the war on
terror is not in the houses of innocent Afghans, the war on terror is not in
the bombardment and killing of Afghan children and women, but in the safe
havens of terrorism outside
Afghanistan
."
The
U.S.
invaded
Afghanistan
almost 10 years ago to overthrow the Taliban regime, which had harbored bin
Laden and other masterminds of the Sept. 11 attacks on
America
. Since
then, as the Taliban mounted a spreading insurgent campaign against the foreign
troops and Karzai's government, the war turned bloodier year after year,
causing 2,441 coalition military fatalities so far and many more Afghan deaths.
There are now some 150,000 North Atlantic Treaty Organization troops in
Afghanistan
,
two-thirds of them American, the highest level since the war started. President
Barack Obama, who ordered last year's surge of 30,000 additional U.S. forces,
has set them the goal of "disrupting, dismantling, and defeating al Qaeda
and its extremist allies" in Afghanistan.
Yet, virtually all the coalition combat operations in
Afghanistan
these
days are conducted against the homegrown insurgency, not al Qaeda's foreign
fighters. Coalition officials estimate that only about 100 or so al Qaeda
militants operate in
Afghanistan
,
mostly in the remote mountainous areas along the northeastern frontier with
Pakistan
.
While the
U.S.
has
already said it will start pulling out its forces this July, as part of a
transition plan that calls for most NATO combat troops to leave the country by
the end of 2014, Obama and the coalition's commanders have not yet specified
the speed and extent of this pullout. Bin Laden's killing, to many, bolsters
the case for a more rapid withdrawal.
"The death of Osama bin Laden will close a key chapter in the war on
terror and allow a reassessment of our posture in
Afghanistan
,"
said Juan Zarate, a senior adviser at the Center for Strategic and
International Studies who served as the
U.S.
deputy national security advisor for combating terrorism in 2005-2009. "It
won't be a lynchpin for
U.S.
troop
withdrawals from
Afghanistan
, but
it will play a role in our assessment of whether we are achieving the goal of
disrupting and dismantling al Qaeda in the region."
Some Afghan politicians were much blunter. "The Americans have achieved
their goal of arresting or killing Osama, and now Americans have no reason to
stay in
Afghanistan
,"
said Ahmad Shah Ahmadzai, who served as prime minister in the mujahedeen
government that fell when the Taliban seized
Kabul
in
1996.
Though the U.S. military claims progress in the war, pointing to successful
campaigns in the southern Kandahar and Helmand provinces, the Taliban remain a
formidable foe, retaining their ability to launch daily attacks, assassinating
government officials and operating shadow government in large swaths of the
countryside.
Just on Monday, the Taliban formally launched their spring military offensive,
dubbed Badar, "to protect the tenets of Islam from the claws of the
invaders and salvage the country and people from the foreign colonialism,"
promising new attacks on foreign and Afghan troops, foreign contractors, Afghan
officials, lawmakers and cabinet members. Some coalition intelligence officials
say they expect this year's fighting season to be the bloodiest on record.
While the Taliban spokesmen have not yet issued any reaction to bin Laden's
killing, former senior Taliban leaders now living in
Kabul
said
the
U.S.
and
allies should not delude themselves into thinking that the death of al Qaeda's
Saudi-born chief will translate into battlefield gains against the Afghan
insurgents.
"The Taliban leaders are Afghans, they follow an Afghan agenda and do not
depend on al Qaeda," said Mullah Abdul Salam Zaeef, the former Taliban
ambassador to
Pakistan
. "Americans
may hope it will affect the war, but it won't."
A senior NATO adviser in
Kabul
agreed with this assessment. "In terms of our campaign in
Afghanistan
, I
don't foresee much immediate consequence," he said, adding that the biggest
potential impact would be if
Pakistan
were
to reduce its support for the Taliban following the bin Laden killing.
The removal of bin Laden could make negotiations with the Taliban, something
that Karzai and some European allies have been pursuing for years, more
palatable to the
U.S.
,
which has only recently embraced the idea, some Western diplomats say. Bin
Laden's death "will be a substantial boost to embrace reconciliation
efforts throughout the region," said Vygaudas Usackas, the European
Union's special representative for
Afghanistan
.
Haroun Mir, the former aide de camp of anti-Taliban commander Ahmad Shah
Masood, killed by al Qaeda days before the Sept. 11 attacks, agreed. "This
is an opportunity for the Taliban to renounce its links to Al Qaeda and
negotiate," said Mir, now director of a
Kabul
think-tank.
It remains to be seen, however, whether the Taliban will seize this
opportunity. In their announcement of the spring offensive, the Taliban once
again rejected any negotiations until all foreign forces leave
Afghanistan
. Also,
for the first time, they expanded their target list to include officials of the
High Peace Council, the body created by Karzai to reach out to the insurgency
in an attempt to start peace talks.
"The death of Osama will not put pressure on the Taliban to
negotiate," said the Taliban regime's former foreign minister, Wakil Ahmed
Muttawakil. "The Taliban are an Afghan movement, while al Qaeda is an
international organization."
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