President Obama is considering a full troop withdrawal from Afghanistan, The New York Times reports in an anonymously sourced article. Obama is winding down the U.S. military campaign by the end of 2014. U.S. troops are scheduled to be reduced down to 34,000 by February 2014. However, those troops may not stay past the end of the year.
Obama is becoming "increasingly frustrated" with Karzai and their relationship "has been slowly unraveling". The Obama administration had been negotiating with the Karzai government over conditions to leave a "residual" U.S. force in Afghanistan post-2014, but those talks have not gone well.
Total military withdrawal of the 63,000 U.S. troops currently in Afghanistan "has gone from being considered the worst-case scenario" to now as viable alternative. Obama is giving "serious consideration" to the "zero option", which would leave no American troops in Afghanistan after next year.
The Obama administration may, however, still see total withdrawal as "useful negotiating tool" and leaking the "seriousness" of Obama's consideration of the alternative may be still a means to increase pressure on Karzai.
“There’s always been a zero option, but it was not seen as the main option,” said a senior Western official in Kabul. “It is now becoming one of them, and if you listen to some people in Washington, it is maybe now being seen as a realistic path.”
The official, however, said he hoped some in the Karzai government were beginning to understand that the zero option was now a distinct possibility, and that “they’re learning now, not later, when it’s going to be too late.”
The relationship between the two presidents reached "a new low" last month when the United States began direct peace talks with the Taliban. A June 27 "videoconference between Mr. Obama and Mr. Karzai designed to defuse the tensions ended badly," according to the
NY Times.
Mr. Karzai, according to those sources, accused the United States of trying to negotiate a separate peace with both the Taliban and its backers in Pakistan, leaving Afghanistan’s fragile government exposed to its enemies.
Mr. Karzai has made similar accusations in the past. But those comments were delivered to Afghans — not to Mr. Obama, who responded by pointing out the American lives that have been lost propping up Mr. Karzai’s government, the officials said.
Karzai wants security guarantees from the United States in exchange for U.S. troops remaining in Afghanistan. The Taliban sees Karzai and members of his government as American puppets and refuse to negotiate with them.