A petulant Karzai invited
Iranian President Mahmoud
Ahmedinejad to Kabul 10 March and listened approvingly as America's
nemesis gave a fiery anti-American speech, condemning the US drive for control
of the Middle East and
Central Asia and for
promoting terrorism in the region. While Karzai can be commended for the
perfectly reasonable initiative -- after all
Iran is Afghanistan's most
powerful neighbour and getting it onside in search of peace is eminently
sensible -- what prompted this nonetheless bizarre performance was Karzai's
anger over being "uninvited" to Washington the previous week. Not that
Washington was well within its rights, after Karzai decided that his election
commission in future should be composed exclusively of his friends rather than
any pesky UN officials.
Another new development is Karzai's sudden love for his former
comrades in the Taliban, whom he betrayed in the late 1990s to take up a job as
Unicol lobbyist and to parachute in with the US when it invaded Afghanistan in
2001. Apparently on his own initiative, he had recently undertaken negotiations
with second-in-command Taliban leader Abdul Ghani Baradar, who the Pakistanis or
Americans immediately arrested in February, much to his displeasure. Undaunted,
within days of the Iranian visit, Karzai entertained representatives of the
Afghan insurgent group Hezb-e Islami led by
Gulbuddin Hekmatyar who,
in 2003, the US State Department honoured as a "Specially Designated Global
Terrorist" for his work with Al-Qaeda
and the Taliban.
This is a strange peace partner for Karzai considering Hekmatyar tried to assassinate him in 2008. His reputation is far worse than the run-of-the-mill Taliban; even Iran expelled him and his handful of followers in 2002, albeit under US pressure. Karzai's photo-op with Hizb-e Islami hardly constitutes a breakthrough, and most knowledgeable sources have little hope for negotiations with the real Taliban (as opposed to the megalomaniac Hekmatyar or the soft Taliban defectors now under house arrest in Kabul). Still, Karzai can only be commended yet again for another perfectly reasonable initiative -- the only way to salvage his own corrupt and incompetent regime is to bring in people who have the respect of the Afghans for what they surely see as a selfless struggle to protect Afghan culture from the invader Christmases.
But both his initiatives have infuriated his patrons in Washington, as both very much undermine the raison d'etre of the occupiers' new surge, which is to kill anyone who dares call himself Taliban and to outlaw any admiration of the Islamic republic to the west.
Karzai has burned just about all his bridges at this point. US
Ambassador Karl Eikenberry
concluded privately in November that Karzai is "not an adequate strategic
partner. ... His circle assume we covet their territory for a never-ending "war
on terror' and for military bases to use against surrounding powers." Alas Mr
Karzai, you can lead a horse like Karl to water, but you can't make him drink.
Since then things have gone from bad to worse. In January, Karzai
reiterated this "theory", complained the US opposes striking a peace deal with
the Taliban, and that he is the only one who can stand up to the goddam Yankees.
Again, perfectly sound arguments, though hardly music to his sponsors' ears. His
silence since the surge in Marja began -- except to criticise civilian deaths --
is just as deafening as his loud rhetoric.
US pundits such as Thomas Friedman angrily attack him: "That is what we're getting for risking thousands of US soldiers and having spent $200 billion already." By ignoring the fraudulent presidential election last year and the widespread corruption, Friedman says Obama is getting what he asks for. "If Karzai behaves like this when he needs us, when we're there fighting for him, how is he going to treat our interests when we're gone?" he wails. "He is going to break our hearts."
In a frantic attempt to bring Karzai to heel, United States
President Barack Obama
made an unannounced visit to Afghanistan -- his first as president -- a few days
after his Iranian colleague's coup. He attempted to smooth over the spat with
Karzai about the election commission and of course give succour to the troops,
though it's unlikely that either goal was achieved. As Obama flew home, the
Afghan president threw another dagger at Obama's back. Defending the
presidential elections last year, he said, "There is no doubt that the fraud was
very widespread, but this fraud was not committed by Afghans, it was committed
by foreigners." He pointed his finger at the American
Peter Galbraith, deputy UN
special representative, who exposed the real fraud and was fired for his pains,
and who considered this latest outburst of Karzai an April Fools' Day joke,
"underscoring how totally unreliable this guy is as an ally."
Karzai also made the very obvious and very valid point: if Western
forces are seen as invaders and the Afghan government their mercenaries, the
insurgency "could become a national resistance." Hello? Who has been supporting
the Taliban for almost a decade? As NATO soldiers "mow the grass", who are the
young men who continue to sacrifice their lives for their country?
The White House
called the speech "troubling" and said it was seeking clarification through the
State Department, which is diplo-speak for "He's no longer our SOB." But the
State Department is in as much of a quandary as the military and Obama. Karzai
must have had second thoughts about his comments and in a 25-minute phone call
to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton last week expressed surprise that his
remarks are seen as critical of the US, that he really just meant to criticise
Western media. Mrs Clinton soothed her troubled ward, assuring him of America's
commitment to Afghanistan and bemoaned she had no control over American news
coverage. As relations between the Obama administration and Karzai become more
tense, Karzai has increasingly turned to Clinton, a development that can only be
interpreted as a naughty boy appealing to a mother figure -- hardly something to
reassure Obama that he has a tough, unflinching warrior-prince who can prevail
against all odds.
But this political snake pit is not all that different than the
Iraqi one, where the former (and incumbent?) president
Nouri Al-Maliki regularly
visited and hosted delegations from Iran, and where America's darling (and
incumbent?) former prime minister
Ayad Allawi defected from the Baathist regime of
Saddam Hussein into UK
exile, founded the Iraqi National
Accord, and in the lead up to the
2003 invasion of Iraq
earned his keep providing "intelligence" about weapons of mass destruction to
MI6. Allawi has lived half of his life in the UK and his wife and children still
live there. He too parachuted in with his patrons, when they began their "Shock
and Awe" devastation of Baghdad in 2003, and now is refashioning himself as the
grand compromiser, bridging all chasms, no matter how wide, deep and
made-in-the-USA.
The big difference with Karzai, of course, is that the US occupiers in Iraq are in control of elections, with no UN or other observers, something that irks Karzai, who is no doubt as suspicious of Allawi's surprising "victory" there as the rest of us, a victory which will conveniently put paid to any more love-ins with the demon Iran.
Though a neutral observer might sympathise with Karzai's
initiatives with Iran and the insurgency considering the fix he is in, it is
hard to sympathise with his staunch support of his brother
Ahmed Wali Karzai,
chairman of the Kandahar provincial council, infamous for his involvement in the
drug trade, money laundering, racketeering and electoral fraud. He even pays
insurgents not to attack his business interests. As the surge reaches Kandahar,
its chief landlord is now seizing land he thinks
NATO may want to rent.
"What's really fuelling the insurgency is groups being disenfranchised, feeling
oppressed by the institutions of state and criminal syndicates," said Mark
Sedwill, NATO's top civilian official in Afghanistan. But as there is no one
left outside his family that Karzai can really trust, Ahmed stays.
An editorial in the New York Times goes as far as to suggest that Karzai is losing his marbles with his latest "rambling speech" full of "delusional criticism", that at times he seemed to be having a conversation with himself, saying that he needed to let go of his anger over the election, but was unable: "We have a knot in our heart; our dignity and bravery has been damaged and stepped on." Karzai apparently thinks "that American lives are being sacrificed simply to keep him in power. It's hard to think of a better way to doom Afghanistan's future, as well as his own."
Fighting words,
those. Has Karzai read his Vietnam history and the fate of nationalist premier
Ngo Dinh Diem, who was
murdered in a coup sponsored by the CIA in 1963? Closer to his heart -- and neck
and other appendages -- is the gruesome fate of his predecessor
Mohammad Najibullah. By openly criticising the occupiers and reaching out to his old
friends, like Allawi he is desperately refashioning himself as the grand
compromiser, hoping to strike a deal with enough of the Taliban to bring the
insurgency under control. No matter how much he badmouths his patrons, he still
figures it is less likely he will die at their hands than at the hands of the
Taliban. Karzai is right to think that "after me the deluge", that the US has no
one else remotely credible to take over. Waiting in the wings is runner-up in
last year's presidential election, the mysterious Abdullah Abdullah, a native
Tajik from the
Northern Alliance,
unswerving foe of the Pashtun-majority Taliban, who will incite outright civil
war.
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