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With Tough Tone, Kerry Defends Swap for Bergdahl Critics of P.O.W. Swap Question the Absence of a Wider Agreement
(about 7 hours later)
WASHINGTON — Secretary of State John Kerry said on Sunday that he felt confident the five Taliban detainees freed in a swap for Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl posed little risk to Americans, adding that Qatari officials were not the only ones monitoring them — and that while the five might be able to return to the battlefield, “they also have the ability to get killed doing that.” WASHINGTON — When the heads of the two major intelligence committees criticized the Obama administration on Sunday for swapping Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl for five members of the Taliban, they homed in on one part of the deal that the White House has struggled for a week, unsuccessfully, to explain. The question is why the five were released without any commitments to a larger agreement, under which the Taliban would renounce international terrorism, and begin a process of reconciliation with the government of Afghanistan.
Mr. Kerry, in some of his first public remarks on the exchange, struck a decidedly tough tone, dismissing as “baloney” the suggestion that terrorists would have new incentive to kidnap Americans. He also hinted, without offering details, that the United States had the means to monitor the Taliban members, who are now in Qatar, and act against them if necessary. That condition had been at the heart of the original discussions with the Taliban about a prisoner swap in 2011 and early 2012. It was abandoned last year, administration officials now say, because the Taliban were no longer interested in a broader deal — probably because the Taliban understood American forces were leaving. Now, both in Afghanistan and in Washington, there are questions about whether the release of the five men gives the Taliban legitimacy, and enhances their power over a weak government in Kabul.
The Qataris “aren’t the only ones keeping an eye on them,” Mr. Kerry said on the CNN program “State of the Union.” He added, “These guys pick a fight with us in the future or now or at any time at enormous risk.” Like the senior members of Congress, Afghan officials said they were caught off guard by the prisoner swap for Sergeant Bergdahl. According to one Afghan security official and another former official who maintains close ties to the presidential palace, many in the Afghan government believed that American officials misled them into thinking that the prisoner swap would not be done unless it was connected to a broader peace effort.
Broadly defending the swap, Mr. Kerry said that it would have been “offensive and incomprehensible” to leave Sergeant Bergdahl in the hands of people who might torture him or “cut off his head.” On Sunday, Sergeant Bergdahl remained at a military hospital in Germany, where medical personnel said he was physically able to travel but not emotionally ready for reuniting with his family, according to American officials briefed on his condition. He received a letter from his sister, but had not yet responded, one official said, and thus far Sergeant Bergdahl has declined contact with his parents.
Despite the determined defense of administration decisions by officials like Mr. Kerry, the firestorm of criticism over the exchange continued unabated on Sunday, with Republican lawmakers and one senior Democrat publicly expressing fresh doubts. But in Washington and Kabul, the political storm surrounding his release has accelerated. On Sunday the congressional leaders did not accuse the administration of misleading them, but of ignoring warnings that if the five Taliban leaders were going to be released from the detention center at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, it should be linked to a deal that improved the chances that a new government in Kabul could survive.
The administration received key support, however, from an influential retired military leader, Gen. James N. Mattis, who said that the exchange would make it easier now to attack the extremist groups involved in Sergeant Bergdahl’s detention. “We have made a serious, serious geopolitical mistake,” Representative Mike Rogers of Michigan, the Republican who is chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, said on ABC’s “This Week.”
Up to now, the general said, every time commanders weighed an attack on the Haqqani network, which operates on both sides of the Afghanistan-Pakistan border, “we were concerned that Bowe Bergdahl could end up dead.” “We’ve empowered the Taliban. The one thing that they wanted more than anything,” he said, “was recognition from the U.S. government.”
That concern is gone, he said, also on CNN. “There’s also a freedom to operate against them that perhaps we didn’t fully enjoy,” he said. Both Mr. Rogers and the chairwoman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Dianne Feinstein, the California Democrat, argued that in 2011 the discussion of releasing Sergeant Bergdahl was couched as a “confidence-building measure” to allow a broader reconciliation with the Taliban.
General Mattis, who headed the United States Central Command from 2010 to 2013, with responsibility for Afghanistan, also argued that the Qataris, with “some of their own prestige at stake,” had reason to monitor the Taliban officials closely. Ms. Feinstein said that when she wrote letters to the White House in 2011 expressing opposition to the planned swap, she warned, “If you release them upfront, there would be no reconciliation; if you release them after progress or at the end and had the agreement to do so, that you might get a reconciliation agreement.” She added, “And that, subsequently, apparently, fell apart.”
Like Mr. Kerry, the general dismissed the idea that the swap might inspire terror groups to kidnap Americans, saying, “It’s not like all of a sudden they have a new impulse here.” At the time, the idea was to keep the five leaders under house arrest, she said on the CBS program “Face the Nation.” In Qatar, she said, they would be free to move around.
Key members of Congress have expressed serious concerns that the administration failed to inform them in advance of the Bergdahl exchange. Secretary of State John Kerry was more blunt about their future, saying that after a year the five might be able to return to the battlefield. But, he said, “They also have an ability to get killed doing that.”
On Sunday, the leaders of the Intelligence Committees in both chambers, Senator Dianne Feinstein of California and Representative Mike Rogers of Michigan, raised the question of why the administration had backed away from a goal enunciated in 2011: to make the Bergdahl deal the first step in a broader, behind-the-scenes effort to reach a reconciliation agreement with the Taliban. Mr. Kerry, offering some of his first public remarks on the prisoner exchange, dismissed as “baloney” the suggestion that terrorists would have new incentive to kidnap Americans. Speaking on CNN’s “State of the Union,” he hinted, without offering details, that the United States had the means to monitor the Taliban closely, and to act against them if necessary.
Ms. Feinstein, a Democrat, also said that she found it hard to accept Mr. Kerry’s assurances that the Taliban members could be kept securely in Doha, the capital of Qatar. Previous negotiations, she said, had included a requirement for the house arrest of the five, in contrast to the current arrangement, which reportedly will allow them to move about the country. In background conversations last week, administration officials admitted that they had abandoned their plans to make the prisoner release the start of a larger set of negotiations. With the Taliban unwilling to engage, President Obama had determined, according to one official, “that you couldn’t let the hopes of an eventual peace deal get in the way of the objective of getting Bergdahl home.” About a week before the swap was announced, Afghan officials said the Americans began dropping hints that something was afoot. The Afghans were, at that point, still hoping that the American plan involved more than a prisoner trade, but the officials said it quickly became clear the Americans had no plan beyond bringing home Sergeant Bergdahl.
“You can’t help but worry about them in Doha,” she said on the CBS program “Face the Nation.” “And we have no information on how the United States is actually going to see that they remain in Doha, that they make no comments, that they do no agitation.” “Even if they were keeping it a secret — the peace talks — and pretending that the trade was just a trade, we could be fine with that,” the Afghan security official said. “But what has happened is worse than nothing: We are made to look weaker, and the Taliban is stronger.”
Mr. Rogers, a Republican, went further, saying that he was convinced that at least three of the Taliban members, and perhaps all five, would try to return to the battlefield. In the meantime, he said on the ABC program “This Week,” they can meet in Qatar with other Taliban figures, or with visiting family members, and send messages by courier to Afghanistan or Pakistan. The officials said the Afghan government would have gladly agreed to keep the five men in Kabul, where they would have stayed in guesthouses run by the National Directorate of Security, ensuring that they were both protected and kept from returning to the insurgency. The officials cited cases of former Taliban leaders who live in Kabul under similar arrangements. Their expenses are paid for by Afghanistan’s National Security Council, which gets funds from the C.I.A.
Mr. Rogers said he did not expect the five to plan anything “operational,” that is, to plan attacks. But he said the conditions of their time in Qatar would allow them “to prepare for what’s next.” “We would have used them to try to lever another approach to peace,” the former official said. “Could you imagine what it would have done to Taliban morale to see the five come to Kabul and have to live under the Afghan government?”
Instead, the Taliban have five of their leaders back, the United States is bringing its soldier home, and the Afghan government is still grasping for ways to open peace talks with the Taliban, who have shown little interest in talking about a broader resolution to the war.
“What does this say to every Afghan that has spent their entire adult lives fighting violent extremism?” said the former official, who is pro-American. “What does this say to all the Afghans that have already died or that will die next year?
“We find Obama’s language about ‘this is how wars end’ extremely insensitive,” the former official continued. “It ends for Americans. But it’s not ending for Afghans. Their intellectual dishonesty here is astounding,” he said. “If all you want to do is leave, then just say it. We all know it.”
The Obama administration did receive support on Sunday from an influential retired military leader, Gen. James N. Mattis, the former top officer at Central Command, who said that the exchange would make it easier now to attack the extremist groups involved in Sergeant Bergdahl’s detention.
Until now, the general said, every time commanders weighed an attack on the Haqqani network, which operates on both sides of the Afghanistan-Pakistan border, “We were concerned that Bowe Bergdahl could end up dead.”
 That concern is now gone, he said on CNN, adding, “There’s also a freedom to operate against them that perhaps we didn’t fully enjoy.”