Exhaustive negotiations between the U.S. and Afghanistan produced on Sunday a draft of a strategic partnership that would guarantee a U.S. presence in Afghanistan and financial support for a decade after formal combat troop withdrawal in 2014. The agreement still needs to be approved by officials on both sides.
“The document finalized today provides a strong foundation for the security of Afghanistan, the region and the world, and is a document for the development of the region,” said Afghan national security adviser Rangin Dadfar Spanta.
Text of the document has yet to be released but it reportedly covers social and economic development in Afghanistan, institution building, regional cooperation, and security. Though the agreement lacks specificity on items like the number of security troops the U.S. will maintain, it represents a broad commitment, both sides considering it more of a symbolic achievement. Not lost on negotiators was the difficultly of achieving a pact with repeated instances of outside strain, including the March killing of seventeen Afghan civilians by Army sergeant Robert Bales. Reports the Times:
In the midst of all these meteor strikes, we were able to still sit down across the table and get these documents agreed to,” one NATO official noted. Many Afghans, including some who are ambivalent about the American presence, believe that the country’s survival is tied to having such an agreement with Washington. They say it will make clear to the Taliban and to regional powers that the Americans will not walk away the way they did in the 1990s after the Soviets were pushed out of the country.
