Informed Comment Homepage

Thoughts on the Middle East, History and Religion

Header Right

Donate

  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • Google+
  • Email
  • RSS
  • Featured
  • US politics
  • Middle East
  • Environment
  • US Foreign Policy
  • Energy
  • Economy
  • Politics
  • About
  • Archives
  • Submissions

© 2023 Informed Comment

  • Skip to content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
Afghanistan

Biden: US Could be in Afghanistan Past 2014; Bombing Shakes Capital

Juan Cole 01/12/2011

Tweet
Share
Reddit
Email
0 Shares

Vice President Joe Biden said Tuesday in Kabul that the US might keep troops in Afghanistan after 2014 if asked to do so by the Afghanistan government. He thus reversed his earlier pledge that the US would be out of that country by that date, “come hell or high water.” He has been under pressure to qualify his earlier comment (presumably directed at his Democratic Party base domestically) because the Afghan Taliban and other insurgents are expected to attempt simply to wait out the US if they have fair confidence that it is on the way out. On the other hand, consistent policy is more likely to succeed.

Also in Kabul on Tuesday, a suicide bomber on motorbike killed 4 and wounded 31 when he sidled up next to a minibus carrying Afghan National Directory of Security staffers and detonated his payload. The explosion, near the Parliament building, shook the capital. That he was able to target that NDS minibus suggests to me that it was an inside job, and that someone somewhere in the Afghanistan government let the radical know when and where to attack. Such penetration of the Afghan security forces by Taliban or other insurgents is in turn highly disturbing. This bombing was the third in the capital in the past month, a worrisome sign. But even more unnerving was the successful assassination of a high intelligence official.

The Afghanistan government is claiming that the US military operation in Qandahar and its environs has cost $100 mn..

Filed Under: Afghanistan

About the Author

Juan Cole is the founder and chief editor of Informed Comment. He is Richard P. Mitchell Professor of History at the University of Michigan He is author of, among many other books, Muhammad: Prophet of Peace amid the Clash of Empires and The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam. Follow him on Twitter at @jricole or the Informed Comment Facebook Page

Primary Sidebar

STAY INFORMED

Join our newsletter and have sharp analysis delivered to your inbox every day.

Twitter

Follow Juan Cole @jricole or Informed Comment @infcomment on Twitter

Facebook



Sign up for our newsletter

Informed Comment © 2023 All Rights Reserved

Posting....