Tensions mount between Washington and its puppet in Kabul

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Tensions mount between Washington and its puppet in Kabul
5 April 2010

Thursday’s warning by Afghan President Hamid Karzai that US and other
NATO troops could be regarded as “invaders” in his country provided a
rare glimpse into the political realities in Afghanistan—and called
forth a furious reaction from the Obama administration and the
American media.

Karzai denounced those in the Washington and the Western media who
have criticized the corruption and incompetence of his regime,
complaining, “They wanted to have a puppet government. They wanted a
servant government.”

The outburst came one day after the Afghan parliament voted to strip
Karzai of the power he had claimed to name all five members of the
country’s election commission, which is to oversee parliamentary
elections in the fall. The decision came under heavy pressure from the
US ambassador.

Karzai declared, “In this situation there is a thin curtain between
invasion and cooperation-assistance.” He warned that if the people
concluded that those in the Afghan government were simply mercenaries
for the Western powers, the Taliban-led insurgency “could become a
national resistance.”

What Karzai warns of as a possible outcome for the US-led war in
Afghanistan has already largely come to pass, as an extraordinary
report in Sunday’s New York Times makes clear.

In a front-page dispatch from Marja, the district recently conquered
by the US Marines in the first major offensive since Obama ordered an
escalation of the war, Times correspondent Richard A. Oppel, Jr.
writes that the Marines have no control in the region outside their
own bases, the Taliban are resurgent, and those collaborating with the
US occupation are isolated and targeted for retaliation. Most
US-funded reconstruction work has been forced to shut down.

Oppel concludes: “In Marja, the Taliban are hardly a distinct militant
group, and the Marines have collided with a Taliban identity so
dominant that the movement appears more akin to the only political
organization in a one-party town, with an influence that touches
everyone. Even the Marines admit to being somewhat flummoxed.”

“We’ve got to re-evaluate our definition of the word ‘enemy,’” Brig.
Gen. Larry Nicholson, commander of the Marine expeditionary brigade in
Helmand Province, told the Times. “Most people here identify
themselves as Taliban.”

Those fighting the occupation of Afghanistan are invariably described
in the Western media as “Taliban,” in an effort to provide a
“democratic” and “progressive” cover for the US-led military
intervention. What Karzai suggests, and the Times report in effect
confirms, is that the US-NATO war is directed against virtually the
entire population of the country.

Karzai’s speech lifts the veil over the real nature of the US war in
Afghanistan, sold to the American people over nearly nine years as a
response to the 9/11 terrorist attacks. The US in engaged in a brutal
colonial war aimed at propping up a puppet regime that will serve US
interests in Central Asia—one of the largest suppliers of oil and gas
to the world market.

It is unusual for the head of a government sustained entirely by US
arms and dollars to issue such a public rebuke to his master. This is
to be explained by two factors: the growing hostility of the Afghan
people to the occupation, in which thousands of innocent people have
been killed by American bombs, rockets, night-time commando raids and
outright massacres; and the desperation of Karzai, who feels himself
increasingly marginalized in his nominal role as head of the Afghan state.

The Afghan president’s speech, to a gathering of election officials,
came four days after the visit by Barack Obama to Kabul, where the US
president had a confrontational meeting with Karzai. Published reports
said that Obama berated Karzai over the corruption in his regime and
the vote-rigging in last year’s presidential election. No doubt the
topic of Karzai’s recent overtures to Iran and China were also raised.

Karzai’s remarks provoked an immediate response from Washington. White
House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs called his statement “troubling”
and “cause for real and genuine concern.” State Department spokesman
Philip Crowley described Karzai’s intervention as “preposterous.”

US officials sought to contain the political uproar over Karzai’s
comments, with Ambassador Karl Eikenberry, the real political power in
Kabul, calling on the Afghan president to “clarify” his remarks, which
he promptly did the next day in a long phone conversation with US
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

But the blast from their Afghan puppet has left American officials in
a difficult position. To dismiss Karzai’s diatribe as lunacy—the New
York Daily News editorial was headlined “Cuckoo Karzai”—means that
1,000 US soldiers and tens of thousands of Afghans have lost their
lives to keep a madman in power.

The New York Times, in an editorial April 3, called Karzai’s criticism
“delusional” and warned that his statement could have political
repercussions in the United States, because “it undermines the fragile
public support for President Obama’s strategy” of pouring 30,000 more
US troops into the Afghanistan war.

“Mr. Karzai is encouraging those who want the United States out of
Afghanistan,” the editorial concluded. “He risks boiling down a more
complicated policy debate to the notion 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.”

The last phrase has a sinister ring, harking back nearly 50 years to
when a previous US puppet ran afoul of Washington—in 1963, when
President Ngo Dinh Diem of South Vietnam, facing similar criticism for
corruption, incompetence and vote-rigging, was overthrown and murdered
in a US-backed military coup, setting the stage for a decade of even
deeper US military intervention.

The Times returned to the subject again in an article posted on the
front page of its web site Sunday afternoon, noting that Karzai had
intensified his criticism of the US in a meeting with his
parliamentary faction. “If you and the international community
pressure me more, I swear that I am going to join the Taliban,” he
reportedly said.

The Times article mulled over possible options for US policy towards
Karzai, listing three options: “threaten to withdraw, or actually
withdraw, troops; use diplomacy, which so far has had little result;
and find ways to expand citizen participation in the government.”

The last “option” is meaningless in an occupied country where all such
“participation” is dictated by the occupying powers. It is perhaps a
euphemism for the one action which has been the most commonly used
weapon in the arsenal of American imperialism—a coup engineered and
facilitated by Washington.

Sections of the former Northern Alliance, based in the Tajik minority,
are certainly capable of carrying out such an action with the proper
encouragement from the Obama administration. There is no doubt that
discussions about that possibility are under way in the White House,
Pentagon and CIA—as well as how to package it as greater “citizen
participation” in the Kabul regime.

Patrick Martin

http://wsws.org/articles/2010/apr2010/pers-a05.shtml

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