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STORY HIGHLIGHTS
(CNN) — Hope flickered in war-torn Afghanistan on Tuesday as national security forces formally took over security leadership and peace talks with the Taliban are now in the works.
NATO-led troops transferred security responsibility to Afghan forces. The United States and an Afghan government group dedicated to peace and reconciliation will hold talks with the Taliban militant group in Qatar.
“I wish a long-term peace in Afghanistan,” Afghan President Harmid Karzai told his troops at a handover ceremony in Kabul.
But a senior U.S. official said reconciliation is likely to be “long, complex and messy” because trust between Afghans and the Taliban is extremely low.
The latest moves could portend a hopeful chapter in the long and costly Afghan conflict. What do these developments mean for Afghanistan and the United States? Here are some key questions that will be asked in the coming months:
Pakistan’s pivotal role in Taliban talks
Afghan government takes over security
Inside a firefight with the Taliban
Born solely to serve others
1. Are the Afghan troops up to the task?
There are certainly doubts.
A Pentagon review in December found that only one of 23 Afghan army brigades was capable of functioning on its own.
Meanwhile, literacy rates are low, desertion rates are high, and many deserters have joined the insurgency. There also have been a troubling number of “green-on-blue” attacks: Afghan troops attacking their American comrades.
But then-Defense Secretary Leon Panetta spoke positively about the progress Afghans had made in growing their army, reducing violence and becoming more self-sufficient. At the time, Afghan forces were leading nearly 90% of operations across the country.
“We’re on the right path to give (Afghanistan) the opportunity to govern itself,” Panetta said.
Karzai has said he welcomes the U.S. troop withdrawal and insists his army can defend the country against the Taliban.
“It is exactly our job to deal with it, and we are capable of dealing with it,” Karzai said during an interview with CNN’s Christiane Amanpour.
2. What are the conditions for peace?
Karzai seems eager to resume stalled peace talks with the Taliban and include them in the political process.
The High Peace Council of Afghanistan — a government group devoted to reconciliation and peace — will go to Qatar and participate in talks with the Taliban, Karzai said Tuesday.
The United States will have a first formal meeting soon in Doha, Qatar, after the Afghans and Taliban huddle, senior administration officials said. The meetings coincide with the Taliban opening an office in the Gulf nation of Qatar.
For their part, the Taliban told reporters in Doha on Tuesday that they want to improve relations with the world. They are calling themselves the “Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan.”
The Taliban back “supporting a political process and a peaceful resolution that will bring an end to the occupation in Afghanistan and establishing an Islamic and independent government in it” and forging “true security,” a representative said.
At the same time, the Taliban representative advocated the idea of political resistance.
The United States and Afghanistan have several conditions the Taliban ultimately need to meet for a peace deal — breaking ties with al Qaeda, ending violence and accepting the Afghan Constitution, including sections on women’s rights, senior administration officials told reporters Tuesday.
Conditions also were outlined by the High Peace Council, with one senior official saying there was no place for violence while talks are ongoing. “We are hoping the (number of) Taliban attacks go down or even stop after we start talks,” the official said.
The first meeting between the United States and Taliban is expected to be an exchange of agendas and what each side wants to talk about, followed by another meeting in a week or two.
One of the administration officials said foremost on the U.S. mind is hearing how the Taliban are going to cut ties with al Qaeda and urging them to talk seriously with the Afghan government. Exchange of detainees are expected to be on the agenda — including Bowe Bergdahl — the U.S. soldier believed to be in militant captivity.
“Peace is not at hand,” another senior official cautioned, adding there is “no guarantee this will happen quickly if at all.”
3. How big a threat do the Taliban still pose?
The Taliban are still “resilient and determined,” according to a recent Pentagon report, and pose a major security threat.
The Taliban continue to carry out high-profile attacks in the capital, Kabul, even targeting the Afghan Supreme Court during a suicide attack in June. Another strike targeted a building near Kabul airport.
On Tuesday, a suicide bomber attacked the convoy of Haji Mohammad Mohaqiq, a member of parliament, killing three people and wounding 21 others. Three bodyguards were among the injured. Mohaqiq — a Shiite and an ethnic Hazara — is a member of Afghanistan’s political opposition.
The Taliban regime in Afghanistan was sheltering al Qaeda when the terror network launched attacks against the United States on September 11, 2001. The next month, the United States cranked up military operations that led to the toppling of the Taliban government.
Ever since, international forces have been fighting radical Islamic militants in Afghanistan and neighboring Pakistan.
4. What are the biggest challenges?
The main fear among Afghans is that the country could revert to another civil war once the United States withdraws its combat troops.
“Some people we’ve spoken to sort of take it for granted that there’s going to be a civil war when the United States leaves,” said CNN’s Erin Burnett on a trip last year to Afghanistan. “It happened before when the Soviet Union left (in 1989).”
Above all, Karzai said the Afghan army needs the tools to battle the insurgents, namely more equipment and firepower. He came to the Pentagon in January with a wish list asking for more helicopters, drones and other hardware, according to a senior defense official.
“We need an air force. We need air mobility,” Karzai told Amanpour. “We need proper mechanized forces. We need, you know, armored vehicles and tanks and all that.”
Retired Army Gen. Stanley McChrystal, once America’s top commander in Afghanistan, said the Afghan people are “terrified because they think they have something to lose.”
“There has been progress made,” he said. “But they’re afraid that if we completely abandon them in 2014, as they perceive we did in 1989, (things) would all go back.”
5. What support will the United States and allies provide?
American forces, now at about 66,000, are expected to dip to 32,000 by the end of the year and further throughout 2014.
The plan is to withdraw all combat troops but keep a residual force in the country to help train Afghans and carry out counterterrorism operations when needed.
The size of that force is still being discussed.
Gen. John Allen, the former commander of U.S. troops in Afghanistan, recommended between 6,000 and 15,000 troops. But that figure was lowered to a range between 2,500 and 9,000, according to a defense official.
The United States and NATO have pledged to continue to support and train Afghan forces in what NATO Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen deems a “new relationship,” starting in 2015.
Acknowledging that there is still much to do in the interim 18 months, Rasmussen said, “Today, our shared goal is in sight.”
CNN’s Ed Payne and Roba Alhenawi contributed to this report.
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By Chelsea J. Carter and Kevin Liptak, CNN
June 19, 2013 — Updated 0226 GMT (1026 HKT)
STORY HIGHLIGHTS
(CNN) — In an open letter to President Barack Obama published Tuesday, dozens of doctors asked to be allowed to treat hunger-striking prisoners at the U.S. detention center at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
For four months, many detainees at Guantanamo have been on a hunger strike, protesting their detention at the facility.
“It is clear that they do not trust their military doctors,” the more than 150 doctors and other medical professionals wrote in an open letter published online by The Lancet medical journal.
“They have very good reason for this, as you should know, from the current protocols of the Joint Task Force Guantanamo, which those doctors are ordered to follow.”
In May, 13 detainees wrote an open letter in the UK-based Guardian newspaper asking to see civilian doctors because they said they did not trust the military doctors whom they accused of force-feeding them against their will.
In their letter to Obama, the doctors and medical professionals said: “The orders they receive are ultimately your orders as their Commander-in-Chief. Without trust, safe and acceptable medical care of mentally competent patients is impossible. Since the detainees do not trust their military doctors, they are unlikely to comply with current medical advice.”
Of the 166 detainees at Guantanamo, 104 are on a hunger strike to protest their treatment an indefinite detention, according to Capt. Robert Durand, a spokesman for the detention facility.
Forty-four of the detainees have received “enteral feeding,” where a tube is inserted through the nose and down the throat to administer liquids, military officials said.
The detainee protest began last year, with five to six detainees starting and stopping hunger strikes. But the number grew after lawyers for some of those held drew attention to conditions at the facility, Army Lt. Col. Todd Breasseale, a spokesman on detainee issues at the Pentagon, said earlier this year.
Human rights groups have long protested the detention of suspected enemy fighters who haven’t been charged with crimes.
The government says the detainees are too dangerous to transfer but cannot be tried, characterizing them as war prisoners under the 2001 Authorization for Use of Military Force Act.
Obama has recently renewed his vow to shut the prison established last decade to house suspected terrorists.
The open letter from the doctors came a day after the federal government was forced to release the names of dozens of detainees at the military prison after a newspaper sued the federal government for the information.
The list released Monday identifies 46 inmates being held for “continued detention” at the facility. The report was made public after a lawsuit by the Miami Herald. The Obama administration first acknowledged that detainees were being held indefinitely in Guantanamo in 2010 but didn’t make their identities public until now.
Of the 46 detainees listed for indefinite detention, the report shows that 26 are from Yemen, 10 are from Afghanistan, three are from Saudi Arabia, two each are from Libya and Kuwait, and one each are from Kenya, Somalia and Morocco.
CNN’s Miriam Falco contributed to this report.
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STORY HIGHLIGHTS
Are you there? Share your story on CNN iReport, but please remember to stay safe.
Istanbul (CNN) — Turkish protesters are giving their government the silent treatment.
Hundreds of men and women stood silently Tuesday in Istanbul’s Taksim Square emulating the performance artist whose quiet protest Monday night quickly gained him the nickname “Standing Man.”
For more than five hours, Erdem Gunduz had stared toward a portrait of Kemal Ataturk, the founder of the modern Turkish state, whose likeness adorns the side of the Ataturk Cultural Center in the square.
Police eventually moved in to arrest many of those who had joined him, but it was unclear Tuesday whether Gunduz was in custody.
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His quiet defiance came after police broke up weekend anti-government protests with tear gas and water cannon.
Turkey has been wracked by more than two weeks of protests against the government of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan. But many of those who joined Gunduz said they were standing only for peace, not taking sides.
“I’m standing against all violence,” said Koray Konuk, one of those arrested. “I’m standing there so that the events that we’ve been witnessing and the events taking place over the last two to three weeks can come to a standstill.”
Woman labeled ‘icon’ of Turkey protests: It’s not about me
Konuk, 45, told CNN that police put him on a bus with up to 20 other people who had joined Gunduz, but that Gunduz was not among them.
“I was just standing. They arrested a man who was just standing,” he said. “That is absurd.”
People, alone or in pairs, continued to arrive and stand silently at the square throughout the day Tuesday. Some held hands in a quiet show of solidarity, and a few supporters even took to putting sunscreen on the faces of some protesters.
But police once again arrived in large numbers and took the placid protesters away in vans.
The hushed tableau came two days after police swept into Taksim Square and neighboring Gezi Park to clear out anti-Erdogan protesters.
The demonstrators tried to return to the park Sunday, only to be driven back by police.
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Root of protests
The unrest began in Istanbul in late May, when a small group of people turned out to protest government plans to bulldoze Gezi Park, the city’s last green space, and replace it with a shopping mall housed inside a replica of 19th century Ottoman barracks.
Protesters said the plans represented a creeping infringement on their rights in a secular society.
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Why are Turks protesting Erdogan?
Turkey was founded after secularists defeated Islamic Ottoman forces in the early 20th century, and many modern-day secularists frown on Ottoman symbols.
Soon after the demonstrations began, security forces cracked down on the protesters. Instead of ending the activity, however, the crackdown prompted more people to come out, many calling for political reforms.
The unrest also brought political risks for Erdogan, a populist and democratically elected politician serving his third term in office.
Speaking Tuesday to a parliamentary group meeting of his Justice and Development (AK) Party, Erdogan said he had no intention of restricting anyone’s democratic rights. “If you want to make a protest do it, do it, but do it within the framework of law,” he said.
He accused the international media of misrepresenting events in Turkey.
“Vandalism (footage) was twisted and displayed as if it was a innocent environmental protest,” he said. “International media reported on this in a manner to deceive those who are not acting with them to their side.”
He said security forces were being patient, refraining from using guns even when two police officers were wounded by gunfire. “When their warnings are not heeded, they use tear gas,” he said.
The police will not turn a blind eye to illegal actions, he said, in an apparent reference to the ongoing protests.
Erdogan reiterated that the government will abandon its plans to build in Gezi Park if the people of Istanbul vote against them.
Erdogan plans to muster a show of support this weekend in the Turkish heartland, where he has a strong base.
The prime minister told parliament that rallies will be held on behalf of the Justice and Development Party in Kayseri on Friday, in Samsun on Saturday and in Erzurum on Sunday.
Is Istanbul safe for tourists?
U.N. concerns
U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay on Tuesday expressed concern about the tactics used by security forces against demonstrators.
“I am particularly concerned about allegations of excessive use of force by police against peaceful groups of protesters as this may have resulted in serious damage to health,” she said in a statement issued from Geneva.
“Reports that tear gas canisters and pepper spray were fired at people from close range, or into closed spaces, and the alleged misuse of rubber bullets, need to be promptly, effectively, credibly and transparently investigated,” Pillay said, noting that “the atmosphere is still clearly highly combustible.”
And Human Rights Watch said Monday that the Turkish government’s response to weekend protests was excessive. “The police assault on a peaceful crowd in Gezi Park and tear gas use in confined spaces showed a dangerous disregard for the well-being — and indeed the lives — of protesters and bystanders,” said Emma Sinclair-Webb, senior Turkey researcher for the rights group.
“The repeated police violence against people who are dissatisfied with government policies has deeply polarized Turkey. The government urgently needs to change police tactics and issue a clear signal for restraint.”
But Erdogan defended the police approach.
“The police forces have passed the democracy test,” he said Tuesday, according to the semiofficial Anadolu Agency news service.
He described the use of tear gas on protesters as an “incontestable right of police” and the demonstrations as “an unprincipled, immoderate movement that is based on lies and deception,” Anadolu reported.
Trade unions had tried on Monday to put fresh pressure on Erdogan by mounting a nationwide strike. But a crowd that marched on Taksim Square dispersed when faced with riot squads backed by water cannon.
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‘There is a level of desperation’
While the protests are unlikely to threaten the rule of Erdogan, who is credited with overseeing a decade of economic growth, they are raising questions about what critics say is an increasingly authoritarian style of governing.
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Some demonstrators have shifted to protesting in their local neighborhoods in the city, putting up barricades. Meanwhile, the atmosphere in confrontations between police and protesters is turning uglier.
“Now it feels like there is a level of desperation,” said Clare Murray, who was vacationing in Istanbul from New York for the past week. “The police seem more comfortable with using aggression.”
Since Saturday night, 116 people have been detained during protests in Ankara and 242 people have been detained in Istanbul demonstrations, said Huseyin Aslan, general secretary of the Progressive Lawyers Association.
Erdogan has accused outsiders of taking advantage of the protests over the park. On Sunday, thousands of his supporters gathered at a rally a few miles from Taksim Square, waving flags and singing songs at a rally that was widely viewed as a re-election rally for the prime minister.
Journalist Karl Penhaul and CNN’s Gul Tuysuz reported from Istanbul, and journalist Ian Lee reported from Ankara. CNN’s Salma Abdelaziz, Arwa Damon and Joe Duran in Istanbul, Antonia Mortensen in Ankara and Tom Watkins in Atlanta contributed to this report.
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June 19, 2013 — Updated 0320 GMT (1120 HKT)
Mexican soldiers arrive at the headquarters of Mexican oil giant Pemex, following an explosion in February.
STORY HIGHLIGHTS
(CNN) — Authorities evacuated the office of Mexico’s state oil company because of an unspecified threat Tuesday night, the company said on its Twitter feed.
In February, a deadly explosion at Pemex headquarters in Mexico City killed at least 37 people.
Officials said that blast was caused by a buildup of gas in the basement.
Pemex is Mexico’s powerful and much-criticized state oil monopoly.
Thousands of people work at the company’s headquarters, which includes a 54-story building. The annex where the explosion happened is adjacent to the tower.
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June 19, 2013 — Updated 0059 GMT (0859 HKT)
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President John F. Kennedy speaks at Schoeneberg City Hall in Berlin on June 26, 1963.
STORY HIGHLIGHTS
Editor’s note: Nicolaus Mills is professor of American studies at Sarah Lawrence College and author of “Winning the Peace: The Marshall Plan and America’s Coming of Age as a Superpower.”
(CNN) — The White House has announced that on Wednesday, at the invitation of German Chancellor Angela Merkel, President Obama will speak in Berlin at the city’s landmark Brandenburg Gate. The president’s subject will be the transatlantic alliance and the enduring bonds between the United States and Germany.
Berlin comes as a welcome relief for Obama. It gives him a chance to put aside for the moment the difficulties he is having in the Middle East and with the National Security Agency spying scandal. The president’s Berlin appearance also reminds us that he is following in historic footsteps.
Nicolaus Mills
June 26 marks the 50th anniversary of President John F. Kennedy’s famous “Ich bin ein Berliner” speech, praising the citizens of West Berlin for their refusal to be intimidated by the massive East German-built wall that since 1961 had divided their city.
The reaction of the crowd listening to Kennedy address them in front of West Berlin’s City Hall was so overwhelming that, on the plane leaving Germany, he remarked to his aide, Ted Sorensen, who had written most of his speech, “We’ll never have another day like this one as long as we live.”
Kennedy is always given style points for his Berlin speech because of its easy-to-remember rhetoric. But the speech is worth recalling today because it amounted to such a profound pivot away from the prevailing nuclear logic of the Cold War. In Berlin, Kennedy recast how he believed the Cold War should be waged in the future in a way that made his thinking clear to the European and American public.
For Kennedy, the chance to speak near the Berlin Wall two years after it was built was a major opportunity to redefine his foreign policy leadership.
In his 1961 Vienna summit meeting with Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev, Kennedy had gotten off to a rocky start. In 1962, during the Cuban missile crisis, he had regained his footing. He had resisted calls by some of the Joint Chiefs of Staff for a massive airstrike against Cuba and made sure he and the Soviets avoided backing each other into a nuclear exchange.
In Berlin, Kennedy showed that he had learned from both confrontations. Instead of treating the Cold War as simply a battle over which side had the most military power and the will to use it, he framed it as a battle that also included the fate of captive peoples and their right to self-determination.
It was an emphasis that would bear fruit in the Prague spring of 1968, in Poland’s Solidarity movement and finally in Ronald Reagan’s 1987 Brandenburg Gate speech with its memorable line, “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!”
Kennedy’s rhetoric in Berlin was equal to his good intentions. “Two thousand years ago, the proudest boast was ‘civis Romanus sum’ (“I am a Roman citizen”). Today, in the world of freedom the proudest boast is ‘Ich bin ein Berliner,’ ” Kennedy declared. His words paid tribute to those Germans trapped in a divided Berlin, but his overriding point was, “Freedom is indivisible, and when one man is enslaved, all are not free.”
Kennedy was doing the opposite of saber-rattling. He was updating the ideas behind the Declaration of Independence so they spoke directly to contemporary Europe. When his audience heard Kennedy’s words, they were reminded of the Berlin Airlift of 1948, in which America responded to the Soviet ground blockade of West Berlin with an airlift that brought West Berliners the food and supplies they needed without U.S. troops firing a shot.
Earlier in June 1963, Kennedy had established the groundwork for his Berlin speech with an address he gave at American University in Washington. There, he spoke about establishing the conditions for an “attainable peace” that was neither a Pax Americana nor a peace of the grave.
The Soviet Union, Kennedy cautioned, needed to abandon its distorted view of an America ready to unleash a preventative nuclear war, but at the same time America needed to make sure that it did not fall into the same trap as the Soviets by seeing Russia through a distorted ideological lens.
Ever the practical politician, Kennedy conceded that he had no “magic formula” for bringing about such a change in the world’s two superpowers, but it was possible, he concluded, to debate the Cold War without each side making new threats. “We can seek a relaxation of tensions without relaxing our guard,” he insisted.
Today, the American University speech is widely praised, but at the time, the speech was seen primarily as a policy statement. The public reaction to the speech was minimal. One day later, the American University proposals were replaced as a front-page story by the highly charged racial confrontation between the Kennedy administration and Alabama Gov. George Wallace over the admission of two African-American students to the formerly all-white University of Alabama.
Berlin was a different story in terms of its popular impact and a sign that Kennedy was becoming increasingly sophisticated in using his personal popularity to promote policy change.
In Berlin, the still-young president took advantage of being on the global stage to make it easier for friend and foe alike to see him as a leader eager to steer America and the world away from nuclear confrontation.
His efforts were not wasted. Two months after his Berlin speech, the United States, Great Britain and the Soviet Union signed the Limited Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, the first such agreement since atomic bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
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The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of Nicolaus Mills.
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