- Lieutenant colonel Brian Christmas (I'm not making this
up) recently threatened the village elders in Sistani, a village near Marja,
with "the choice between American guns and American resources".
Read: turn stoolie. The Afghan president begs to differ, says Eric
Walberg
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- There can be no doubt that Washington is in the throws
of a mental breakdown over what to do about Afghanistan. The very
unenthusiastic surge now underway is a disaster on the ground, as NATO, Taliban and
civilian deaths skyrocket in Marja and Kandahar, with Kunduz coming
up in the brutal Afghan summer. The staunchly noncombatant Germans are
supposed to spearhead the latter operation, but there is a revolution brewing
at home after three of them died in a few seconds last week, and nearby
their comrades gunned down five Afghan soldiers in a case of "friendly
fire". To make matters worse, far worse, America's political hope, President
Hamid Karzai, is doing his best to scuttle the occupiers' plans, however
altruistic and noble they might be.
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- 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.
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- 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, two weeks after 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.
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- 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.
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- 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.
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- 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.
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- 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.
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- 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."
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- In a frantic attempt to bring Karzai to heel, United
States President Barack Obama made an unannounced visit to Afghanistan
-- his first as president -- 28 March, after Karzai returned from Teheran
where he celebrated Navruz the previous day with his new friend. Obama
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."
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- 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?
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- 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.
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- 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.
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- 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.
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- 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 brotherAhmed 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.
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- 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."
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- 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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- Given his D- report card, there are no American officials
on Karzai's side anymore and it is hard not to imagine a scenario where
his American guards fail to shield him from the next assassination attempt.
But he should watch out. It may not be Hekmatyar, the Taliban or the CIA
that takes the next shot at him. Ahmed runs armed mercenary groups said
to be behind the assassinations of provincial officials such as Sitara
Achekzai and Yunus Hosseini. Fratricide is a time-honoured way to seize
power.
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- ***
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- Eric Walberg writes for Al-Ahram Weekly http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/ .
You can reach him at http://ericwalberg.com/
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