Afghanistan

In a matter of months, or perhaps weeks, the United States and the government of Afghanistan could sign a security agreement that would dramatically extend what is already the longest war in US history. Leaked details reflect a plan that would keep around 10,000 US troops in Afghanistan through “2024 and beyond,” and they would still conduct combat operations against “terror” threats, which of course in Afghanistan, could be a very wide definition. In other words: indefinite war. But a bipartisan group of senators launched a concerted effort on Thursday to slow the rush to further war. A resolution co-sponsored by Democratic Senators Jeff Merkley and Joe Manchin and Republican Senators Mike Lee and Rand Paul would demand a debate in Congress followed by a vote authorizing a US military presence in Afghanistan after 2014.

Afghanistan's intelligence service has abandoned its investigation into the murder of a group of civilians after being refused access to U.S. special forces soldiers suspected of involvement, according to a document obtained by Reuters. Seventeen men disappeared after being detained in U.S. raids in Wardak province between October 2012 and February 2013. Bodies of 10 of the men were found by residents in shallow graves within several hundred metres of the U.S. soldiers' base. Mystery surrounding their deaths has added tension to U.S.-Afghan ties already strained over delays to a proposed security pact designed to define the future of U.S. troops after most foreign forces leave the country by the end of next year. In the report authored by Afghanistan's National Directorate of Security (NDS) intelligence agency, investigators said they had asked the United States for access to three U.S. Green Berets and four Afghan translators working with them but were rebuffed. "Despite many requests by NDS they have not cooperated. Without their cooperation this process cannot be completed," said the report, which was originally published on Sept. 23. U.S. military officials were not immediately available for comment but they have long said the Green Berets did not take part in, or turn a blind eye to, illegal killings in Wardak.

The Afghan War is officially winding down. American casualties, generally from towns and suburbs you’ve never heard of unless you were born there, are still coming in. Though far fewer American troops are in the field with Afghan forces, devastating “insider attacks” in which a soldier or policeman turns his gun on his American allies, trainers, or mentors still periodically occur. Civilian casualties continue to rise. “Surgically precise” U.S. air and drone strikes still mysteriously kill Afghan civilians. And as U.S. combat troops withdraw, Afghan-on-Afghan fighting is actually increasing, with the U.S.-trained army taking almost Vietnam-level, possibly unsustainable casualties (100 or more dead a week), while the police are similarly hit hard. Meanwhile, as TomDispatch regular Ann Jones points out, our second longest war has already played Houdini, doing a remarkable disappearing job in "the homeland." Almost 12 years after it began, no one here, it seems, is considering how to assess American “success” on that distant battlefield