The US campaign in Afghanistan suffered a double blow Thursday when the Taliban broke off peace talks and President Hamid Karzai demanded NATO troops immediately pull out of rural areas because of anger over a US soldier's alleged killings of 16 civilians. The setbacks effectively paralyze the two main tracks for ending the 10-year-old war. Part of that exit strategy is to gradually transfer authority to Afghan forces while another tack is to pull the Taliban into some sort of political discussions with the Afghan government. Karzai also said he now wants Afghan forces take the lead for countrywide security in 2013, a year ahead of schedule. He spoke as Afghan lawmakers were expressing outrage that the U.S. flew the soldier suspected in civilian killings to Kuwait Wednesday night when they were demanding he be tried in the country. “Afghan security forces have the ability to keep the security in rural areas and in villages on their own,” Karzai said in a statement after meeting visiting U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta. He said he had conveyed his demand to Panetta during their meeting. Foreign Ministry spokesman Janan Mosazai confirmed that Karzai was asking for NATO to immediately pull back from villages and rural areas to main bases. The soldier, who has not been named, is accused of going on a shooting rampage in villages near his base in southern Afghanistan on Sunday, killing nine children and seven other civilians, and then burning some of their bodies. Karzai told Panetta that the weekend shootings in southern Afghanistan were cruel and that everything must be done to prevent any such incidents in the future. President Barack Obama and British Prime Minister David Cameron said in Washington on Wednesday that they and their NATO allies were committed to shifting to a support role in Afghanistan in 2013.
