Karzai Steps Up Attacks on NATO, Boxing In the West

[Cees Binkhorst]

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The enemy within?

Groet / Cees

April 4, 2010
Karzai Steps Up Attacks on NATO, Boxing In the West
By ALISSA J. RUBIN

KABUL, Afghanistan — As President Hamid Karzai made more antagonistic
statements over the weekend toward the NATO countries fighting on behalf
of his government, the West was taking stock of just how little
maneuvering room it has.

There are no good options on the horizon, many analysts say, for reining
in Mr. Karzai or for penalizing him, without potentially damaging
Western interests. The reluctant conclusion of diplomats and Afghan
analysts is that for now, they are stuck with him.

Many fear the relationship is only likely to become worse, as Mr. Karzai
draws closer to allies like Iran and China, whose interests are often at
odds with those of the West, and sounds sympathetic enough to the
Taliban that he could spur their efforts, helping their recruitment and
further destabilizing the country.

“The political situation is continuing to deteriorate; Karzai is
flailing around,” said a Western diplomat in Kabul with long experience
in the region. “At the moment we are propping up an unstable political
structure, and I haven’t seen any remotely plausible plan for building
consensus.”

The tensions between the West and Mr. Karzai flared up publicly last
Thursday, when Mr. Karzai accused the West and the United Nations of
perpetrating fraud in the August presidential election and described the
Western military coalition as coming close to being seen as invaders who
would give the insurgency legitimacy as “a national resistance.”

Despite a conciliatory phone call to Secretary of State Hillary Rodham
Clinton on Friday, his comments over the weekend only expanded the discord.

On Saturday, Mr. Karzai met with about 60 members of Parliament, mostly
his supporters, and berated them for having rejected his proposed new
election law. Among other things, the proposal would have given him the
power to appoint all the members of the Electoral Complaints Commission,
who are currently appointed by the United Nations, the Afghan Supreme
Court and the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission. The
Electoral Complaints Commission, which reviews allegations of voting
fraud and irregularities, documented the fraud that deprived Mr. Karzai
of an outright victory in the presidential election.

At the meeting, Mr. Karzai stepped up his anti-Western statements,
according to a Parliament member who attended but spoke on condition of
anonymity.

“If you and the international community pressure me more, I swear that I
am going to join the Taliban,” Mr. Karzai said, according to the
Parliament member.

A spokesman for Mr. Karzai, Waheed Omar, could not be reached for
comment on Sunday.

In a speech in Kandahar on Sunday, Mr. Karzai promised local tribal
elders that coalition military operations planned for the area this
summer would not proceed without their approval.

“I know you are worried about this operation,” he said, adding: “There
will be no operation until you are happy.”

Given his tone in the last few days, it was unclear whether he was
literally extending the elders veto power over the offensive, or merely
trying to quell their fears and bring them on board.

Interviews with diplomats, Afghan analysts and ordinary Afghans suggest
that the United States and other Western countries have three options:
threaten to withdraw troops or actually withdraw them; use diplomacy,
which so far has had little result; and find ways to expand citizen
participation in the government, which now has hardly any elected
positions at the provincial and district levels.

Threatening to withdraw, which Stephen Biddle, a senior fellow at the
Council on Foreign Relations, called the “nuclear deterrent” option,
would put the United States and other Western countries in the position
of potentially having to make good on the promise, risking their
strategic interest in a stable Afghanistan. Few experts think the
country would remain peaceful without a significant foreign force here.
Moreover, withdrawal could open the way for the country to again become
a terrorist haven.

Some Western critics of Mr. Karzai believe that the West has no choice
but to threaten to leave.

“There is no point in having troops in a mission that cannot be
accomplished,” said Peter W. Galbraith, former United Nations deputy
special representative for Afghanistan, who was dismissed after a
dispute with his superiors over how to handle widespread electoral fraud
and what senior U.N. officials later said was his advocacy of Mr.
Karzai's removal. “The mission might be important, but if it can’t be
achieved, there is no point in sending these troops into battle. Part of
the problem is that counterinsurgency requires a credible local partner.”

Diplomacy has so far failed to achieve substantial changes, although
some analysts, like Mr. Biddle, who opposes the so-called nuclear
option, believe that the West should demand concessions before spending
any more money on development projects like digging wells and building
schools.

“We do millions of things in Afghanistan, and any of those things can
become a source of leverage,” he said. “Far too much of what we do in
Afghanistan we just do without asking for anything explicit in return.”

That approach can backfire, some argue, hurting those the West most
wants to help.

Greater power sharing, while promising, faces structural obstacles.
Under the Constitution, provincial governors, local judges, district
governors and most other offices are appointive rather than elective. In
some areas, Afghan and American programs have begun to involve
communities in local budgeting, but progress is slow and it would
probably take several years to expand it to higher levels of government.

“There are no better angels about to descend on Afghanistan,” said Alex
Thier, a senior Afghan analyst at the United States Institute of Peace.
“Unless some drastic action is taken, Mr. Karzai is the president of
Afghanistan, and he was just elected for another five years.”

That prospect leaves some Afghans uneasy. In interviews with more than a
dozen people around the country, there was apprehension and dismay over
Mr. Karzai’s clash with the international community, and the specter of
renewed chaos it could lead to.

“Karzai delivered this speech based on his own difficulties with the
foreigners,” said Gulab Mangal, a tribal leader in the Musa Khel area of
Khost Province.

“When the international community criticized his brother, he started to
raise these problems,” he said, referring to Ahmed Wali Karzai, a
prominent figure in southern Afghanistan. “It shows the relation between
Karzai and the international community is deteriorating day by day, and
that should not be allowed to happen.”

Mehram Ali, a man from Wardak Province who was shopping in Kabul over
the weekend, voiced a similar qualm. “We need the international
community to keep supporting us and our government,” he said.

“In this recent situation we do need foreign soldiers to help us in
bringing peace and stability for our country, and if the foreigners
leave us, then the people of Afghanistan will face adversity from every
direction, and Afghanistan will return to what it was like 10 years ago
when we had the Taliban government.”

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