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President Barack Obama slipped unannounced into Afghanistan on Friday, one year after widening an ever deadlier war and just days before a pivotal review about the 9-year-plus conflict. Plans for a face-to-face meeting with Afghan President Hamid Karzai were scrapped at the last minute due to weather.
Under intense security, Obama landed in darkness after a clandestine departure from the White House on Thursday, where plans of his trip into the war zone were tightly guarded. Obama stepped off Air Force One just after 8:30 p.m. local time, clad in a leather jacket.
He was to personally thank U.S. troops for their service during the holidays.
The White House said rough weather forced the president to abruptly drop plans to meet Karzai in Kabul. The White House determined the wind, dust and cloud cover made it unsafe for the president to fly by helicopter from the huge military complex here to the presidential palace.
In a rapidly changing sequence of events, the White House then said they would speak by secure videoconference — but later said that, too, was dropped. Instead, the two leaders were expected to speak by phone.
In total, Obama was to spend three hours on the ground in Afghanistan, about half the time he had scheduled.
His visit to thank troops and civilian workers came ahead of an upcoming full review of his war plan later this month. He planned to visit embassy workers and wounded soldiers and speak to troops at a hangar here. On the flight, the White House said Obama’s war review would include no major policy changes.
The secret trip has been in the works for more than a month. National Security aide Ben Rhodes said Obama wanted to go to Afghanistan between Thanksgiving and Christmas.
“It’s always tough to serve in harm’s way but when you’re away from loved ones in the holiday season it’s particularly hard, and the president wanted the ability to come out and have some time with them,” Rhodes said.
Rhodes said the scrapping of the personal visit with Karzai would not have consequences because the two just met at a NATO summit in Lisbon two weeks ago.
Obama’s visit comes at a particularly awkward moment in already strained U.S. relations with Afghanistan. Leaked U.S. cables show American diplomats portraying Afghanistan as rife with graft to the highest levels of government, with tens of millions of dollars flowing out of the country and a cash transfer network that facilitates bribes for corrupt Afghan officials, drug traffickers and insurgents.
A main concern in the cables appears to be Karzai himself, who emerges as a mercurial figure. In a July 7, 2009, dispatch, U.S. Ambassador Karl Eikenberry describes “two contrasting portraits” of the Afghan president.
“The first is of a paranoid and weak individual unfamiliar with the basics of nation building and overly self-conscious that his time in the spotlight of glowing reviews from the international community has passed,” the cable says. “The other is that of an ever-shrewd politician who sees himself as a nationalist hero. … In order to recalibrate our relationship with Karzai, we must deal with and challenge both of these personalities.”
In Afghanistan on Friday, White House press secretary Robert Gibbs said weather and technical problems prevented the videoconference with Karzai.
Reporters learned late in the flight that the in-person meeting was canceled. Even Gibbs seemed surprised to learn of it. He was interrupted with the news on the weather problem after he had started a briefing with reporters traveling with Obama toward the end of the flight.
Obama was greeted on the tarmac by the top NATO commander in Afghanistan, U.S. Gen. David Petraeus, and Eikenberry.
Angelina Jolie on Wednesday condemned a Florida church’s threat to burn copies of the Muslim holy book to mark the ninth anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks.
The 35-year-old actress and humanitarian spoke out against the proposed burning during a trip to Pakistan to raise awareness about the floods that have devastated the largely Muslim country over the last six weeks. She visited in her capacity as a goodwill ambassador for the U.N.’s refugee agency.
Jolie’s criticism mirrored that of top U.S. officials, who have described the church’s plan as a disgraceful act and have even warned that it could endanger U.S. troops in Afghanistan and Americans worldwide.
“I have hardly the words that somebody would do that to somebody’s religious book,” Jolie told reporters in Islamabad after visiting refugees camps in northwestern Pakistan – one of the areas of the country hit hardest by the floods.
The Christian minister organizing the Quran burning, Pastor Terry Jones, has said he plans to go ahead with his burning of the Quran in spite of concerns. He is part of the Dove World Outreach Center, a tiny, evangelical Christian church in Gainesville, Fla., with an anti-Islam philosophy.
The issue has not gotten much attention in Pakistan, where officials and residents have been trying to cope with the devastation caused by floods that first hit the country at the end of July following extremely heavy monsoon rains. The floodwaters have killed more than 1,700 people and have affected more than 18 million others.
“I was shocked especially by how high the floodwaters went,” said Jolie, who wore a long dress and covered her hair with a black scarf in keeping with local Muslim custom. “In some of the people’s houses, it was nine feet high.”
U.N. officials have expressed hope that Jolie’s visit would help spark the fundraising campaign to help Pakistan, which has stalled in recent days. The U.N. issued an appeal for $460 million in emergency funds on Aug. 11, but only $294 million, or 64 percent, has been received so far, even though it is one of the worst natural disasters in recent years.
“I’ve always said that Afghanistan would be the tougher fight,” General Petraeus said at the time.
Now the burden falls to him, at perhaps the decisive moment in President Obama’s campaign to reverse the deteriorating situation on the ground here and regain the momentum in this nine-year-old war. In many ways, General Petraeus is being summoned to Afghanistan at a moment similar to the one he faced three years ago in Iraq, when the situation seemed hopeless to a growing number of Americans and their elected representatives as well.
But there is a crucial difference: In Iraq, General Petraeus was called in to reverse a failed strategy put in place by previous commanders. In Afghanistan, General Petraeus was instrumental in developing and executing the strategy in partnership with Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal
General Petraeus, 57, brings an extraordinary set of skills to his new job: a Boy Scout’s charm, penetrating intelligence and a ferocious will to succeed. At ease with the press and the public, and an adept negotiator, General Petraeus will probably distinguish himself from his predecessor with the political skills that carried him through the most difficult months of the counteroffensive in Iraq known as the surge.
The former president of Afghanistan Burhanuddin Rabbani has been assassinated in a suicide attack on his home. Afghan and Western leaders have pledged the killing will not deter the country from its current path.
Police confirmed on Tuesday that Afghanistan’s former President Burhanuddin Rabbani had been killed in a suicide attack on his home, not far from the US embassy in a supposedly secure diplomatic zone in the capital Kabul.
“Mr Rabbani has been martyred in the blast,” said Kabul police chief, Mohammad Zahir. “A suicide bomber disguised as a visitor detonated his vest and
killed him.”
Rabbani had been tasked with leading peace efforts in the war-torn country as head of President Hamid Karzai’s High Peace Council. So far it had not succeeded in negotiating with the Taliban.
“Rabbani was supposed to meet two Taliban members in his house today. They might have killed him,” said Arsala Rahmai, a member of the Council.
No diversion from freedom
Karzai cut short talks with US President Barack Obama after receiving news of the attack. He pledged the killing “would not deter us” from continuing the quest for peace, adding that Rabbani was an “Afghan patriot who sacrificed his life.”
The assassination raised new questions about the ability of fledgling Afghan security forces to protect even the most prominent politicians as US-led forces begin a transition to Afghan security control.
“We both believe that despite this incident, we will not be deterred from creating a path whereby Afghans can live in freedom, safety and security and prosperity,” Obama said at the meeting with Karzai, the first since the pullout was announced.
“It is going to be important to continue the efforts to bring all of the elements in Afghanistan society together to end the senseless cycle of violence.”