Three Things to Watch for at Today's Kabul Summit

Delegates from over 60 countries have descended on Kabul to discuss Afghanistan's future. Unlike most international summits, this one will likely produce concrete results rather than empty happy talk. There are already signs this summit will make serious strides towards determining how the West will extricate itself from Afghanistan.

Diplomats will leave tomorrow having committed billions of dollars to Afghanistan's development and set out a timeline to withdraw NATO troops and hand over power to the Afghan government. They may also agree to jumpstart peace talks with the Taliban by supporting the removal of some of its leadership from a UN terror watchlist.

But how far will these measures go to secure Afghanistan, and what do they mean for its various international sponsors and local powerbrokers? The answers are less than reassuring.

Parsing the New Deadline

NATO countries have endorsed a plan to begin withdrawing international troops by the end of this year and hand over full responsibility for security to Afghan forces by 2014. However, NATO officials are emphasizing this plan could be revised later on depending to account for the situation on the ground.

Despite the caveat, this new deadline represents an early defeat for NATO's new top soldier in Afghanistan, Gen. David Petraeus, who is believed to oppose a deadline on the grounds that it makes it impossible for his troops to earn Afghans' trust -- instead, Afghans will stay as far away from international troops as possible, in the hope that the Taliban won't kill them once NATO leaves.

The majority of Americans who believe the Afghan war is "not worth it" have little to celebrate either. This new deadline guarantees three more years (at least) of heavy troop fatalities and countless more billions of taxpayer dollars spent on a war effort whose link to American national security grows more tenuous by the month.

The only real winners in this deal are the Europeans, Canadians and Australians, who have been itching to get out of Afghanistan for years, and can now do so without taking flak from Washington for jeopardizing the war effort.

Taliban Amnesty?

Hamid Karzai has been lobbying the UN for months to remove the names of several dozen Taliban commanders from its terror blacklist (those on the list are banned from overseas travel and cannot access their foreign assets). After this summit, Karzai may get his wish.

Karzai believes this pre-emptive move is the only way to convince insurgents to discuss a peace settlement with his government, something they have thus far publicly refused to do. Though UN officials have objected to many of the names Karzai has submitted, they have committed to send at least 10 of them to the Security Council for their consideration by the end of the month.

The chief obstacle to Security Council approval is Russia, which has little inclination to do favors for ex-mujaheddin leaders and is still smarting from Washington's perfunctory dismissal of its call for the UN to crack down on Afghanistan's drug industry (over 20,000 Russians die each year because of heroin, most of which comes from Afghanistan). Russia is attending the Kabul summit, which gives U.S. officials an opportunity to propose a trade-off -- NATO agrees to take more action against Afghan opium if Moscow agrees to support the removal of Taliban commanders from the terror list.

This would be a bitter pill for Karzai and NATO to swallow -- a renewed offensive on the opium crop will drive many Afghan farmers to back the Taliban. But, if Karzai is insistent that UN action is a prerequisite for a peace deal, it may be their only option.

Billions in new aid, but who gets to spend it?

One area where Karzai seems likely to lose is aid -- he wants NATO to follow through on its commitment to channel half of its aid through his government within the next two years. Western governments are expected to endorse this request on paper, but in practice, they'll likely continue to bypass his notoriously corrupt government and direct most of their aid to local governments and independent aid agencies.

This might not be a good thing. According to Karzai, aid that bypasses Kabul is more likely to be wasted than money that flows through it, and he may actually be right. The Pentagon, for instance, has spent millions on Afghan contractors who secure NATO convoys by bribing the Taliban not to attack them. Aid agencies, meanwhile, submit ridiculously inflated bills for infrastructure projects, bills which suggest a large portion of their budgets get sucked up by warlords, insurgents and corrupt government officials.

Western governments will almost certainly use the Kabul summit to announce a massive expansion in Afghan aid. But no matter who gets to spend that cash, only a fraction of it will likely benefit Afghans.

The Kabul summit marks a major step forward towards defining NATO's Afghan exit strategy. But, faced by growing American dissatisfaction with the war effort, no clear sign that the Taliban will be willing to discuss peace and a culture of corruption that has absorbed much of their aid money, they still have a lot to figure out.