Posted on 07/22/2002 7:58:33 PM PDT by SBeck
G.I.'s to Guard Afghan Leader Amid Concerns
By CARLOTTA GALL
ABUL, Afghanistan, July 22 — American soldiers, including Special Forces, will move into the presidential palace and take over responsibility for the security of President Hamid Karzai, illustrating concern for his safety after the assassination of a vice president this month, a presidential spokesman said today.
In Washington, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said the newest mission for American soldiers in Afghanistan might last several months and was intended to ensure that Afghans keep the leader recently appointed by a grand council of representatives from all over the country.
"We certainly look at it as a relatively short-term matter," Mr. Rumsfeld said at a news conference. "What that means, whether it's weeks or months or several months, I don't know."
Mr. Rumsfeld declined to say whether the move followed a specific threat or a request from Mr. Karzai.
"The important reason why he decided to do this, and why we decided to be cooperative about it, is because we agree that it's important that the Afghan people not have an interruption in their leadership, having just completed that process," Mr. Rumsfeld said. "It's a very straightforward issue."
Mr. Karzai's spokesman, Said Tayab Jawab, cast the move in the light of the assassination of a vice president in full daylight in Kabul on July 6.
"After the unfortunate incident of Haji Abdul Qadir's assassination, we are reviewing all security measures for the president, and a number of U.S. Special Forces will be helping Afghan Special Forces to ensure the security and safety of the president," Mr. Jawad said.
An official at Afghanistan's Ministry of Defense said 45 American troops, including Special Forces, would take over the presidential security detail. The 70 or so Defense Ministry commandos will leave the presidential palace and return to their base, he said.
Mr. Jawad said the Afghan guards would remain working with the Americans, who would train them in security work for several months. Peacekeepers of the International Security and Assistance Force in Kabul also announced this week the start of a one-month training program for bodyguards for cabinet ministers.
Mr. Karzai's acceptance of an American security detail is a sign of the very real worries among foreign powers that, if something happens to him, the carefully built power-sharing agreement in the country would collapse.
While Afghanistan's military and police forces remain disparate groupings loyal to individual commanders, security remains precarious throughout the country.
The situation was underlined by the United Nations special representative in Afghanistan, Lakhdar Brahimi, in a speech to the Security Council in New York last Friday.
"Whatever successes we may have witnessed so far in Afghanistan," Mr. Brahimi said, "a single act or event can send fear down the spines of the most powerful people in Afghanistan, and has the potential seriously to destabilize the situation."
Mr. Brahimi warned that further setbacks and crises were likely and urged the international community to respond with even "more determined cooperation" with the Afghan people and leaders who supported peace.
An investigation into Mr. Qadir's death has produced few leads so far, and the government has asked international peacekeepers in Kabul to assist in the investigation.
The Afghan authorities have arrested 15 people, most of them guards at the ministry where the shooting occurred, but they admit that none are under serious suspicion of committing the crime.
Vice president Karim Khalili, who is in charge of the investigation, gave little away at a recent news conference. He did not rule out that Taliban or Al Qaeda could have been involved, but Mr. Qadir, who had long been a strongman in eastern Afghanistan, had many enemies, among them rival commanders and drug barons.
The extra security given Mr. Karzai will please many of his supporters, but it has also created tensions in Kabul.
The decision has angered some members of the Defense Ministry, which is run by Marshal Muhammad Qasim Fahim, an ethnic Tajik who fiercely guards his position of power in Kabul.
Some Defense Ministry commandos, who have been responsible for the president's security since his arrival in the capital in December, admitted that they were unhappy about the takeover by Americans because it would make the president appear even more in the American pocket.
"Whose president will he be if he is not guarded by Afghan soldiers?" one commando asked.
What the F..K!?!? What the F..kity F..K!!!!!
It's official, mission creep has set in and the National Security Command has gone insane. Flame away, Bushbots.
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