Immediately after a U.S. staff sergeant killed 16 Afghan civilians in the Kandahar Province yesterday American officials leapt to mitigate the damage done to the planned withdrawal of troops and the ongoing negotiations with Taliban leaders. Those talks, which had made significant, if slow progress in recent weeks, may have been set back irrevocably. According to Al Jazeera, the Taliban has vowed revenge against the "American savages" who committed a "blood-soaked and inhumane crime" against innocent Afghan men, women and children.
Both President Obama and Defense Secretary Leon Panetta spoke with Afghan president Hamid Karzai, hours after the incident. “The fear is that all these incidents, taken together, play into the Taliban’s account of how we treat the Afghan religion and people," an American military official told the Times. "And while we all know that’s a false account—think how many the Taliban have killed, and never once taken responsibility—it’s a very hard perception to combat.”
The paper notes that last month's accidental Koran burning "cast sudden doubt on nearly every facet of the American presence in Afghanistan," so it's difficult to understate the impact this incident may have on the U.S.'s relationship with the country. Beyond the geopolitical implications are the safety concerns for the American civilians who work for development firms or as private contractors, as private security firms will be barred from the country at the end of the month.
One company employing workers in Afghanistan are looking the other way as their employees keep guns, which is against local law, while another is mulling a lawsuit against the US Agency for International Development for breach of contract due to the increasingly worse security conditions. Others are pulling out altogether. “They just made a decision that there was so much uncertainty, so much risk that they were just not going to continue,” a employee representing two dozen private aid companies said.
Yesterday's attack represents a "very bad message the Afghan people are getting," according to Najeeb Azizi, an Afghan analyst based in Kabul. "If U.S. military remains in Afghanistan beyond 2014 and their attitude and behavior remains the same—of killing innocent civilians—what will be the consequences, and how will the Afghan people respond to it."
