[Congressional Record Volume 158, Number 160 (Wednesday, December 12, 2012)]
[House]
[Pages H6703-H6705]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
AFGHANISTAN
The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair recognizes the gentleman from
North Carolina (Mr. Jones) for 5 minutes.
Mr. JONES. Mr. Speaker, in this very chaotic time for the House of
Representatives and for the American people, we need to remain focused
on the fact that our young men and women are still dying in
Afghanistan. Our involvement in Afghanistan has become a confused
strategy at best.
Mr. Speaker, I will submit a news article for the Record. The title
of this article is: Afghan peace plan gives U.S. smaller role. With it,
Mr. Speaker, I would like to submit 12 names of American servicepeople
killed recently.
Mr. Speaker, it is time for Congress to listen to the American people
and start acting on their wishes. Poll after poll shows that they want
to get out of Afghanistan now, they want our troops home, they want to
stop seeing our young men and women dying, and the American people want
the $10 billion a month being spent in Afghanistan to be spent here in
America to help all our economic problems. I do not understand why we
in Congress seem to be without debate about this problem in
Afghanistan.
We are currently in the process of a bilateral security agreement
that will keep our troops in Afghanistan for 10 years after 2014. Where
is the outrage by Congress? We are financially broke. We complain all
the time about we can't reach this deal or that deal, we're going over
the cliff, and yet our troops are dying in Afghanistan and we're
spending money we don't have.
Mr. Speaker, the article states:
The Afghan Government is pursuing a peace initiative in
which Pakistan would replace the United States in arranging
talks between the warring sides and the Taliban would be
granted government posts that effectively could cede to them
political control of the southern and the eastern
strongholds.
[[Page H6704]]
Mr. Speaker, those areas are where we've lost most of our young men
and women fighting the war in Afghanistan, and yet we are going to give
those areas where our young men and women died to the Taliban so they
can control it? Where is the outrage here in Congress? I do not know.
Mr. Speaker, in plain English, Afghanistan is allowing Pakistan and
the Taliban to control half the country. And while the Taliban takes
back Afghanistan, how does this make any sense? Where is the outrage?
The American people are outraged, Mr. Speaker, but not Congress.
Mr. Speaker, I have beside me a poster that tells pain. There is this
little girl sitting in her mother's arms. The mother is crying. The
little girl is so young, she doesn't know why this Army officer is
presenting her mother a flag. She doesn't know that her daddy has been
killed. She will one day, and she'll ask her mom, What was my daddy
like? And the mom will say, He was a great man. He would love to see
you now as you've grown older, but he died in a country known as
Afghanistan, a country that will never change, no matter how much blood
or how much money is spent in Afghanistan.
Mr. Speaker, before closing, I have a Web site that if people would
join and sign, and the Web site is www.bringthemhome2013.com.
It is time for this administration and Congress to say enough has
been done. It is time to bring our young men and women home. If
Pakistan is going to have more influence in Afghanistan than America,
then let Pakistan send their soldiers to die in Afghanistan. Let
Pakistan pay the $10 billion a month that America is paying right now--
and it is borrowed money from the Chinese.
Mr. Speaker, with that, I will close by asking God to please bless
our men and women in uniform, to please bless the families who have
given a child dying for freedom in Afghanistan and Iraq, God to please
bless the House and Senate that we will do what's right for the
American people in the House and the Senate. I ask God to give
strength, wisdom, and courage to President Obama that he would do what
is right in the eyes of God, and I'll close by asking three times, God
please, God please, God please continue to bless America.
[From the McClatchy Washington Bureau, Dec. 8, 2012]
Afghanistan Peace Plan Would Increase Pakistan's Role
(By Jonathan S. Landay)
The Afghan government is pursuing an ambitious new peace
initiative in which Pakistan would replace the United States
in arranging direct talks between the warring sides and the
Taliban would be granted government posts that effectively
could cede to them political control of their southern and
eastern strongholds.
If implemented, the plan would diminish the role of the
United States in the peace process, but would still leave
Washington with input on a number of critical issues,
including the terms for initiating negotiations. Saudi
Arabia, Turkey and Great Britain also would be involved.
The plan envisions ending the war by 2015 through a
ceasefire and negotiations in the second half of next year,
most likely in Saudi Arabia. Pakistan would help select the
leaders of the Taliban and other rebel groups who would take
part in the negotiations with the Afghan government. The
effort, the plan says, should be conducted ``through one
consistent and coherent channel,'' a measure that would
secure a role for Afghan President Hamid Karzai after the end
of his term following April 2014 elections.
Another provision would give the insurgents a voice on
``issues related . . . to the withdrawal'' of the U.S.-led
NATO force by the end of 2014.
The plan foresees the United States working with Kabul and
Islamabad in determining which insurgent leaders would
participate. The United States also would be critical to
approving the removal of the insurgent negotiators from the
U.N.'s list of terrorists.
Entitled ``Peace Process Roadmap to 2015,'' the blueprint
represents a decision by Karzai--in close coordination with
Pakistan--to assume the lead in peace-making efforts
following the collapse earlier this year of an Obama
administration bid to persuade the Taliban to participate in
direct talks with Kabul.
The new initiative comes amid persistent distrust between
Karzai and the Obama administration and deep insecurity in
Kabul over future U.S. support. Those concerns and the U.S.
failure to arrange peace talks appear to have pushed Karzai
closer to Pakistan, whose army and main intelligence service
are widely believed to exercise significant influence over
Taliban and other militant leaders based in Pakistan's border
areas with Afghanistan.
The plan also comes as the ongoing U.S. combat troop
pullout and cuts in U.S. financial aid to Afghanistan are
fueling fears in both countries that violence and instability
could worsen, spurring them to take matters into their own
hands.
The blueprint, a copy of which was obtained by McClatchy,
officially is the work of Afghanistan's High Peace Council,
which is charged with overseeing government peace efforts.
But it was drafted by Karzai and his inner circle over the
past six months in coordination with Pakistan, according to a
person familiar with the document who requested anonymity
because of the matter's sensitivity.
The plan was presented to Pakistan and the United States
during visits last month by High Peace Council Chairman
Salauddin Rabbani, who Karzai named to the post after
Rabbani's father, former Afghan President Burhanuddin
Rabbani, was assassinated in September 2011.
The State Department declined to comment on the plan,
refusing even to confirm its existence. However, a State
Department official, who requested anonymity because of the
issue's sensitivity, was authorized to say that, ``The United
States continues to support an Afghan-led peace process and
welcomes initiatives through which Afghans sit down with
other Afghans in pursuit of that goal.''
The Afghan embassy did not respond to a request to discuss
the plan.
``By 2015, Taliban, Hezb-e-Islami and other armed groups
will have given up armed opposition, transformed from
military entities into political parties, and are actively
participating in the country's political and constitutional
processes, including national elections,'' says the plan's
preamble. ``NATO/ISAF forces will have departed from
Afghanistan, leaving the ANSF (Afghan National Security
Forces) as the only legitimate armed forces delivering
security and protection to the Afghan population.''
Despite that optimistic forecast, however, the plan may
rest on shaky legs. Its far-reaching assumptions not only
could doom it to failure, but risk an all-out civil war
before the U.S.-led International Security Assistance Force,
or ISAF, completes its pullout.
``This is living in a dream world of wishful thinking,''
said Marvin Weinbaum, a Middle East Institute scholar who
served as a State Department intelligence analyst on
Afghanistan. ``It is not based on anything that the Taliban
has given us reason to expect.''
A major assumption is that all insurgent leaders and their
fighters will participate even though the Taliban have
consistently rejected negotiations with Karzai, who they
denounce as an American puppet. Moreover, the insurgency is
far from being monolithic and many leaders are known to
distrust each other and Pakistan.
Taliban chief Mullah Mohammad Omar and other leaders based
in Pakistan could come under pressure from the Pakistani
military to take part if they balk. But such pressure could
backfire, risking Afghan militants joining Pakistani
Islamists fighting to topple their government.
In an incident underscoring the hurdles, two Taliban
factions claimed responsibility for a suicide bomb attack on
Thursday that wounded Asadullah Khalid, the chief of
Afghanistan's intelligence service. Karzai on Saturday
alleged that the attack was planned in Pakistan, but he
denied that the Taliban were responsible.
The new plan would preserve Afghanistan as a parliamentary
democracy, denying the militants the Islamic rule for which
they've spent years fighting.
It also appears to ignore warnings from politicians of the
former Northern Alliance against giving the Taliban and their
allies power that they hadn't won in elections. The Northern
Alliance, dominated by ethnic minorities, battled the
Taliban, which is made up primarily of the dominant Pashtun
ethnic group, until the 2001 U.S. invasion. Many former
alliance members now head Karzai's political opposition and
hold key army, police and intelligence posts.
``Any Afghanistan reconciliation effort will have to
address varied and complex ethnic concerns,'' acknowledged a
U.S. official, who requested anonymity in order to discuss
the issue.
Finally, the key role that the plan confers on Pakistan
could inflame suspicion among many Afghans that Islamabad
plans to exert influence in a post-war Afghanistan--
especially to block a pro-India tilt--by placing former
insurgents in cabinet posts, ministries, provincial
governorships and positions like police chiefs and district
administrators.
``The northerners won't buy this,'' said Weinbaum,
referring to former Northern Alliance leaders. ``So what you
get then is the beginning of a civil war.''
Pakistan is widely despised in Afghanistan, particularly by
minorities who dominate the country's north, because of its
sponsorship of the Taliban's bloody nationwide takeover in
the mid-1990s and the support and sanctuary that they and
other insurgents allegedly still receive from the Pakistani
army and the army-run Inter-Services Intelligence
Directorate, or ISI.
In principles governing the new peace process, the plan
reiterates Afghan and U.S. demands that the Taliban and other
insurgents cut ties with al Qaida and renounce violence.
But in a shift that could raise concerns among human rights
and women's groups, the plan changes what had been a demand
for
[[Page H6705]]
the insurgents to ``accept'' the Afghan Constitution to one
that they ``respect'' it.
``Any outcome of the peace process must respect the Afghan
Constitution and must not jeopardize the rights and freedoms
that the citizens of Afghanistan, both men and women, enjoy
under the Constitution,'' the plan says.
The plan comprises five steps. The first step, which now
appears underway, calls for Pakistan to end cross-border
shelling of Afghan villages and to free Taliban detainees.
Nine were released last month after Rabbani's visit, and
Pakistan has agreed to free more.
In the first half of 2013, Afghan, U.S. and Pakistani
officials are to agree on terms for removing Taliban leaders
``willing to engage in peace talks'' from a U.N. terrorism
list and giving them safe passage. Pakistan would
``facilitate direct contact'' between Afghan officials ``and
identified leaders of the Taliban and other armed opposition
groups.''
Afghan, Pakistani and U.S. officials would ``explore and
agree to terms for initiating direct peace talks'' between
the sides ``with a focus on Saudi Arabia as the venue.''
The negotiations would begin in the second half of 2013
``preferably through one consistent and coherent channel,
with the aim of securing agreements on priority issues, such
as ending violence, allowing space for the provision of basic
public services, e.g. education, humanitarian aid, and
security in the conduct of the upcoming elections,'' the plan
says.
The sides would agree to a ceasefire and terms for the
release of Taliban prisoners by the government ``in return
for their agreement to disengage and renounce violence.''
The sides also would ``reach an understanding on issues
related to security and the withdrawal of international
forces.'' and agree on rules for the insurgents'
participation in 2014 provincial council and 2015
parliamentary elections.
Another provision would confer considerable political power
on the insurgents by allowing them to become cabinet members,
provincial governors, district administrators, police chiefs
and other key officials.
``The negotiating parties to agree on modalities for the
inclusion of Taliban and other armed opposition leaders in
the power structure of the state, to include non-elected
positions at different levels with due consideration of legal
and governance principles,'' the plan says.
That provision, combined with one for an agreement
``creating immediate space for education and humanitarian and
development aid and public services,'' could effectively cede
political control of the Taliban's southern and eastern
heartland to the insurgents.
The agreements would be implemented in the first half of
2014, and the final phase, set for the second half of 2014,
would be used to build international cooperation on
preserving the long-term stability of Afghanistan and the
region, the plan says.
Correction: Paragraph 10 of this version has been revised
to provide the correct date for the assassination of former
Afghan President Burhanuddin Rabbani.
____
List of Names To Submit for the Record
Sgt. 1st Class Darren M. Linde
Spc. Tyler J. Orgaard
Lance Cpl. Anthony J. Denier
Cpl. Christopher M. Monahan, Jr.
Petty Officer 1st Class Kevin R. Ebbert
Lance Cpl. Dale W. Means
Sgt. Channing B. Hicks
Spc. Joseph A. Richardson
Staff Sgt. Rayvon Battle, Jr.
Sgt. Matthew H. Stiltz
Capt. James D. Nehl
Kenneth W. Bennett
____________________