Afghanistan Establishes Conditions for U.S. Presence

Afghan president Hamid Karzai has been meeting with the "loya jirga," which is the Afghan national assembly, to set up a plan for the future of Afghanistan.  These talks have included a security pact with the United States that would set terms on U.S. presence in Afghanistan.

According to CNN, one of the main topics of discussion at the loya jirga was whether or not the United States should be allowed to have long-term military presence.  If the U.S. is not allowed to do this, Afghanistan will acheive sovereignity, which has been its main goal, but will also be more vulnerable to its neighboring countries and to the Taliban.

Another topic of discussion at the loya jirga was reconciliation with the Taliban.  CNN also says that there is widespread support for reconciliation, but there is little strategy of how to proceed.

Karzai wants the relationship between Afghanistan and the United States to be one of two independent countries, according to BBC News.  Karzai says his conditions include the end of night raids, in which NATO raids houses suspected of harboring insurgents in the middle of the night, and the detention of his countrymen.

NATO has agreed to withdraw from Afghanistan by 2014, given there are satisfactory security conditions in place. According to USA Today, NATO has been training Afghan forces to fight alongside them and calm down Taliban-led insurgencies.  They may be able to train them enough that they would be able to fight on their own once the U.S. military leaves.

America and Afghanistan have been working on finding a way to withdraw the remaining 100,000 troops in Afghanistan, but not lose stability once they're gone.  As for now, according to USA Today, the United States has decided to remain in Afghanistan, because the U.S. is one of the most powerful nations while Afghanistan is one of the poorest.  The U.S. will remain in Afghanistan until it acheives its goals stability-wise. 

Photo by World Economic Forum.