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A gathering of thousands of Afghan tribal elders, statesmen and others is meeting this week in Kabul to discuss and debate the final draft of an agreement between the US and Afghanistan as part of the winding down of the longest war the US has ever waged. US officials spent months negotiating with Afghan President Hamid Karzai on what the nature of Western presence would be in the coming months and years.

While the details of the agreement are yet to emerge, a few of the main sticking points included the numbers of US troops that would remain and for how long and what sorts of operations they would be allowed to carry out as well as whether or not they would be subject to Afghanistan’s judicial system.

The pact that emerges is likely to be far more favorable to the US than a similar agreement made with Iraq three years ago. President Hamid Karzai threw a wrench into the works yesterday when he announced Afghanistan would not sign any agreement until after the next presidential elections in April. The US has since issued it’s own condition for the pact to be signed by the end of this year.

GUEST: Bob Dreyfuss, contributing editor to the Nation, and author of Devil’s Game: How the United States Helped Unleash Fundamentalist Islam