The killing of 16 villagers by a US soldier in Afghanistan’s south could hurt Washington’s efforts to reach a strategic pact with Kabul to allow a long-term US presence in the country, an Afghan official said yesterday.
Sunday’s attack on the civilians, the latest US public relations disaster in Afghanistan, could be a turning point for the US, which wants to maintain advisers there as it tries to wind down the increasingly unpopular war.
The Strategic Partnership Agreement currently being negotiated is a key part of that strategy.
“This could delay the signing of the Strategic Partnership Agreement,” the Afghan government official said.
Simmering anti-American anger has boiled over since copies of the Koran were burned at a NATO base last month, with many Afghans insisting it is time for the US and their NATO allies to leave.
Those calls are likely to grow after the shooting spree in villages in the province of Kandahar, the heartland of the Taliban.
The civilian deaths, mostly children and women, might also force Afghan President Hamid Karzai to harden his stand in the partnership talks to appease a public already critical of his government’s performance.
The partnership agreement, which Washington and Kabul have been discussing for more than a year, will be the framework for US involvement in Afghanistan after foreign combat troops leave at the end of 2014.
The Kandahar violence came just days after the US and Afghanistan signed a deal on the gradual transfer of a major US-run detention center to Afghan authorities, overcoming one of the main sticking points in the partnership negotiations.
Afghanistan wants a timeline to take over detention centers and for the US and NATO to agree to end night raids on Afghan homes as preconditions for signing the pact.
Civilian deaths are one of the main sources of tension between Kabul and Washington, with the war in its 11th year.
Incidents such as the Koran burning at Bagram air base and the Kandahar shooting show the challenges that remain as foreign forces gradually transfer security responsibility to Afghans.
Sunday’s attack might also harden a growing consensus in Washington about what can be accomplished in Afghanistan.
The bill for the war has already exceeded US$500 billion and more than 1,900 US troops have been killed, with the total number of foreign troops killed approaching 3,000.
“These killings only serve to reinforce the mindset that the whole war is broken and that there’s little we can do about it beyond trying to cut our losses and leave,” said Joshua Foust, a security expert with the American Security Project.
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