What’s that old saying “With friends like these….” (fill in the blank). Afghanistan President Hamid Karzai is at it again:
The president of Afghanistan, Hamid Karzai, has cast doubt over Nato’s planned summer offensive against the Taliban in the southern province of Kandahar, as more than 10,000 American troops pour in for the fight.
Karzai threatened to delay or even cancel the operation — one of the biggest of the nine-year war — after being confronted in Kandahar by elders who said it would bring strife, not security, to his home province.
Visiting last week to rally support for the offensive, the president was instead overwhelmed by a barrage of complaints about corruption and misrule. As he was heckled at a shura of 1,500 tribal leaders and elders, he appeared to offer them a veto over military action. “Are you happy or unhappy for the operation to be carried out?” he asked.
The elders shouted back: “We are not happy.”
“Then until the time you say you are happy, the operation will not happen,” Karzai replied.
General Stanley McChrystal, the Nato commander, who was sitting behind him, looked distinctly apprehensive. The remarks have compounded US anger and bewilderment with Karzai, who has already accused the United States of rigging last year’s presidential elections and even threatened to switch sides to join the Taliban.
Karzai is becoming a quintessential symbol of how foreign policy and military policy are at the mercy of countries they impact, and those country’s political dynamics. And the dynamics can often undermine what the policies seek to accomplish. But in this case he threatens to become an increasingly criticized symbol, as the American news media reports on Americans killed in Afghanistan and the U.S. heads into election year.
In this case, the report suggests he’s using control over military operations as bone to throw to those who are upset over rampant corruption.
Not the best symbol of a country where Americans and others are sacrificing their lives to preserve the current non-Taliban government.
In a must-read-in-full Op-Ed in the San Francisco Chronicle, Joel Brinkley, a professor of journalism at Stanford University, and a former foreign correspondent for the New York Times, writes in part:
Even before Karzai began shooting off his mouth, several European countries were talking about pulling their troops out of Afghanistan. They are weary of the war. Karzai’s latest remarks are hardening the resolve to leave.
Washington might see Karzai’s pugnacious attitude as political theater intended to win support from the populace that did not vote for him and does not like him. If that’s his strategy, then it doesn’t seem to be working, and that is a monumental new problem.
Suppose Western forces retake Kandahar city in the coming weeks, as they are planning to do. From there, they mount offenses in other Helmand, Kandahar and Zabul provincial Taliban strongholds. What happens when the troops leave? They install local governments and police forces, as they did in Marjah. Kabul chooses, or at least approves, these new officials. They are then Karzai government representatives.
Local tribal leaders may be chosen for these new positions. But the minute they accept, they are tainted. If Afghans, by and large, despise Karzai and have no respect for his government, why does anyone think local officers of that same government will engender anything but scorn?
Already some residents of Marjah are betraying the new government. U.S. Marines have been giving residents money as compensation for property damaged during the fighting. Some residents are handing their cash to Taliban fighters.
Add to the list of debilitating problems afflicting the Afghan war: Marjah, perhaps Kandahar, and other Potemkin villages that will likely fall to the Taliban just as soon as Western forces leave Afghanistan.
Not a pretty picture — the scene and Karzai hiimself..
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.