On Monday, President Karzai left for Washington to talk about unsolved and un-detailed issues in sphere of bilateral relation. As he is serving the last year of his presidency and vague prospective looms due to foreign military withdrawal, Hamid Karzai is avidly trying to attract larger support of the Washington in peace negotiation with Taliban militants. However, Washington has, frequently, voiced out support for Afghan-led peace talks with Taliban and other armed militants, but the nature and magnitude of support have yet to be ascertained.
On one hand, Taliban leaders constantly reject any possible peace talks with Afghan government and recently voiced out their opposition to constitution; on the other government releases prisoners and nobody dares to follow where they finally go.
Releases of Taliban prisoners are also fervently welcomed and labeled as success for High Peace Council negotiator who held talks with Pakistani officials over the issue late last year. In addition, such moves are branded as step forward for reconciliation; but how? It is something Kabul officials need to clarify, and Washington officials are reluctant to approve.
The second issue at the heart of Karzai-Obama meeting will be the quantity of US troops after 2014 and controversial issue of judicial immunity. At the first place, no exact figure has been presented yet. At first the military hoped there might be as many as 20,000 U.S. troops left behind after combat operations in Afghanistan officially cease at the end of 2014. But now an administration official is saying that number will not exceed 10,000 and could be even zero.
Gen. John Allen has put the figure between 6000 to 20,000. Risk pointer oscillates within two given figures. Higher figure, lesser risk and vice versa. It should be noticed that he did not put the notion that with maximum number (20,000), stable and save Afghanistan will be guaranteed.
Secondly, Afghan officials have not showed any green signal to compromise with judicial impunity of US soldiers serving beyond 2014. Due to high sensitivity, frequently governments have gone under wheel of civil pressure in cases foreign troops were involved. Similarly, the issue is of high importance for the United States as witnessed in Iraq, the country which is far strategically and economically important for the US in comparison to our country.
Meanwhile, when Iraqi officials did not confer impunity, US military was cut down to zero. It will be hard for the Washington to keep soldiers in the country without conferring judicial impunity. Let's see whether President's trip will lubricate the mutual relation, considering the above frictions.