SOFA in Afghanistan?

[MSG Proctor]

President Obama is correct that American troops should not remain in Afghanistan without a status of forces agreement. He will need to be far more committed to achieving that agreement than he was when Washington sought to negotiate a SOFA with Iraq. It is said that Baghdad now regrets that it did not agree to a SOFA—the country is once again teetering on the brink of ethnic conflict—and is advising Kabul not to make the same mistake.

http://nationalinterest.org/commenta...ghanistan-7968

I am in Kandahar and wondering how the Small Wars Council sees this playing out.

The Taliban's Voice of Jihad propaganda is here.

Excerpt:

The stay of American troops in Afghanistan after the year 2014 and providing them immunity against the internal laws have neither concurrence with the Islamic principles nor with the Afghan gallantry nor with our national traditions. Giving the right to an aggressor to ramble freely in our Islamic country and in case of committing cruelty and infringement against the Muslim dwellers of the country while the Afghan courts have no power to penalize them according to the Islamic Sharia law; it will not only be a great mourning for the Afghan nation but will also be hundred percent against Islam, humanity and justice.

[davidbfpo]

MSG Proctor,

I have moved an earlier post on the thread 'Afghan Exit:why, how and more in country and beyond' which hopefully gives some context to your quest about a SOFA.

It does appear from the earlier post something is being done to enable a PMC with Afghan SOF to "stay behind" and so give both Kabul and the USA a capability to act in CT, not COIN action.

[MSG Proctor]

The "zero option" alluded to in that article is what concerns me. We are running out of geopolitical capital to squander on hasty exits.

[davidbfpo]

MSG Proctor,

By coincidence, timely maybe, the daily book reading on BBC Radio Four is from the new book on the First Anglo-Afghan War (1839-1842), which ended with an appalling disaster in the retreat from Kabul. My book is the old classic 'Kabul Catastrophe: The Retreat of 1842, by Patrick Macrory (paperback 1986).

Concern exists here, within government, over as you wrote:

We are running out of geopolitical capital to squander on hasty exits.

The history of Afghanistan and external involvement has plenty of lessons on display, I do wonder if those immersed in Afghanistan today have learnt much from them - even the latest Soviet exit.

Understandably there is political and military weight behind an orderly, phased exit; far better than a hasty exit, but there are other possibilities. The Second Afghan War (1878-1880) gave the British more bloody lessons (incidentally a historian of that war is giving a talk @ Oxford University next month, on how the British conducted their exit).

A US SOFA sounds horribly like "saving face" alongside maintaining a capability for coercive action - for national US reasons - within Afghanistan, maybe next door too.

You being in Kandahar is appropriate, stay safe.

[MSG Proctor]

The Taliban are hammering away at the theme of a SOFA agreement being anti-Islam, against Sharia, against Islamic tradition, and unjust towards Afghans.
While many see through their rhetoric, the greater % of the illiterate population that are beholden to their mullahs for accurate, credible information, guidance, and religious legal rulings are affected the by the Taliban's messaging.
All I'm saying is that the Taliban are leveraging religion in a way that is cheap, appealing and effective towards their end state. The GIRoA and ANSF have a tall order in front of them to answer the claims of the Taliban insurgency. The people of southern Afghanistan are very, very religious.

[Madhu]

David,

In your reading did you come across anything on the relationship between numbers of troops post 2014 and planned elections? What can be the status of any agreement in that background?