Karzai bends on order for forces to exit region

U.S. to pull 1 unit, yield control of 1 district

An Afghan Army soldier secures the hill overlooking the Kart-e Sakhi mosque in Kabul, Afghanistan, Wednesday, March 20, 2013. Thousands of Afghans will celebrate Nowruz on Thursday, March 21, 2013 to mark the first day of spring and the beginning of the year on the Iranian calendar. (AP Photo/Ahmad Jamshid)
An Afghan Army soldier secures the hill overlooking the Kart-e Sakhi mosque in Kabul, Afghanistan, Wednesday, March 20, 2013. Thousands of Afghans will celebrate Nowruz on Thursday, March 21, 2013 to mark the first day of spring and the beginning of the year on the Iranian calendar. (AP Photo/Ahmad Jamshid)

KABUL - Afghanistan’s president on Wednesday relented in his demand for all U.S. special-operations forces to withdraw from a strategic province east of the capital, agreeing to a compromise calling for the pullout of one team implicated in abuse allegations that the Americans have rejected.

The dispute underscores the fragile negotiations under way as President Hamid Karzai seeks to redefine and expand control of his country and as the United States and its allies prepare to end their combat missions by theend of 2014.

Wardak province is viewed as a gateway to Kabul and has been the focus of counterinsurgency efforts in recent years.

But Karzai last month ordered all U.S. special-operations forces out after local villagers accused Afghan troops working with the Americans there of torture, illegal detentions and other abuses.

The U.S.-led coalition denied the allegations. But NATO said Karzai and Gen. Joseph Dunford, the U.S. commander of all allied forces, had agreed Wednesday to remove a team of comman-dos and turn over security to government forces in Wardak’s Nirkh district, the center of the allegations.

British army Lt. Gen. Nick Carter, deputy commander of NATO forces in Afghanistan, said it will be “business as usual” for U.S. special-operations forces elsewhere in the restive province.

In an interview from Kabul with Pentagon reporters, Carter also described a vaguetimeline for the Nirkh transition, saying it will happen “once the plan has been put together and there is confidence on all sides that it ispossible” for the Afghans to take over security there.

Clarifying an earlier statement from NATO, Carter said the Afghan local police who work with U.S. special-operation forces could stay on in some form, possibly paired with elite Afghan troops in place of the Americans - or they might be replaced by conventional Afghan forces, but that would be up to theAfghan security chiefs to determine.

The deal took more than three weeks for U.S. and Afghan security officials to craft, and wasreached more than a week after the expiration of the deadline for the U.S. pullout initially set by Karzai.

The compromise was reached after a string of anti-American rhetoric from Karzai as he nears the end of his second and final term.

Karzai has long complained that the U.S. special-operations forces and their Afghan partners have operated outside his control, but he must tread a delicate balance between his calls for a faster withdrawal and the continued need for foreign protection.

His demand that U.S. commandos withdraw from Wardak province raised fears that the move would leave the area and the neighboring capital of Kabul more vulnerable to al-Qaida and other insurgents who are active there.

The agreement will speed up the hand-over of security in the troubled province, faster than U.S. officials and some members of Karzai’s own government had recommended or planned.

Carter suggested that the shift in Nirkh will serve as a test for the broad NATO plans to gradually shift security control of the country to the Afghans, and withdraw U.S. and NATO combat forces by the end of 2014.

“This is a very interesting pilot, if you like, in terms of how transition will occur over the course of the next year or so,” he said. “Wardak is probably one of most complicated provinces that we have had to deal with, and how this goes, I think, will be a good bellwether of howthe overall transition process works.”

Afghan Defense Ministry spokesman Gen. Zahir Azimi said Afghan forces were ready to fill the gap.

“The international forces are ready to withdraw the special forces from Nirkh district of Maidan Wardak province, and Afghan army units are going to replace them in the coming days,” Azimi said at a news conference Wednesday in Kabul.

Speaking ahead of the announcement of the deal, Karzai’s spokesman Aimal Faizi said Afghan security forces would take control of the entire province eventually, so the gradual transfer “can be a testing period.”

With the Wardak disagreement resolved, U.S. and Afghan officials can now work on the delayed transfer of the Parwan Detention Center to the Afghans. Dunford said the two sides still had to come up with an acceptable way to allow the U.S. to check that the detainees theyhand over are being treated humanely, as well as a way to cement Karzai’s assurances that 30-40 detainees the U.S. considers dangerous will not be released.

Violence was particularly severe in southern Afghanistan on Tuesday and Wednesday.

A protest in response to accusations of desecration of the Koran in Helmand province turned violent Wednesday, with four civilians reported killed, and five civilians and two police officers wounded in clashes between protesters and police, officials said.

The violence in Musa Qala emerged over accusations that a district police official had ripped a Koran, though conflicting reports from provincial officials and religious leaders left the facts of what happened unclear. Some claimed that the protests had been stirred up by the Taliban.

Three men traveling on the road from Sangin districtto Ghorbak district in Kandahar province were abducted by the Taliban and beheaded, an Afghan official said. One tribal elder said the men were members of the Afghan Local Police, while the district governor reported they were civilians.

In Zabul province, three Afghan Border Police officers were killed in a fight with another border police officer, officials said, adding that the assailant, who is thought to have escaped to Pakistan, was not involved with the insurgency.

The Taliban, however, claimed responsibility for the killings, saying the officer was an infiltrator.

In Khost province, in the east, a magnetic bomb placed on a vehicle driven by Afghan security forces claimed the lives of two police officers.

Information for this article was contributed by Kimberly Dozier, Lolita C. Baldor, Rahim Faiez and Mirwais Khan of The Associated Press and by Azam Ahmed of The New York Times.

Front Section, Pages 1 on 03/21/2013

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