Afghanistan: In Defence of Hamid Karzai (Foust)

The conflict within the US Administration over the American strategy towards Afghanistan Hamid Karzai escalates. One faction considers him Washington's partner, to the point where he is receiving payments from the CIA. Another considers him a fundamental part of the problem of Kabul's governance and corruption.

On Tuesday, The New York Times published the revelation that the National Security Agency, responsible for the collection of electronic intelligence, was wire-tapping Karzai's older brother Mahmoud, and derisory chatter about Karzai as "mentally ill" got louder.

In contrast, Joshua Foust rose to the defence of Karzai, albeit by saying the problems were much larger than the man who holds the Presidency. From Foreign Policy:

Afghan President Hamid Karzai has come under considerable criticism in the U.S. for his emotional outbursts and cantankerousness. Foreign Policy managing editor Blake Hounshell mocked Karzai recently for crying over the prospect that his son, Mirwais, might leave the country to live a better life. Bob Woodward’s newest book alleges that Karzai is has received treatment for manic depression and smokes marijuana -- leading commentators to speculate that the Afghan president has lost the ability to lead. However, Hamid Karzai remains the only real option for crafting a political and institutional framework that will stabilize the country, and the sooner the U.S. realizes it, and stops wishing for a perfect leader to fix an imperfect war, the better off we’ll be.

There’s no doubt President Karzai has behaved erratically over the past year. First, there was hisuncomfortably warm welcome to Mahmoud Ahmadinejad when the Iranian leader arrived in Kabul on March 10. Then came Karzai’s fiery anti-American speech on April 3, in which he blamed “foreigners” for the country’s election irregularities and reportedly even threatened to join the Taliban.

Karzai’s government was widely seen as corrupt and incompetent long before the 2009 presidential elections. The most damning indictment came from the U.S. ambassador in Kabul, Karl Eikenberry, who wrote in a secret memo that “Karzai is not an adequate strategic partner” and urged the United States to cut its losses. According to Woodward, Eikenberry at one point also said Karzai was “off his meds, he’s off his meds.” Eikenberry lost the argument inside the administration, and President Obama instead chose to send 30,000 additional troops to escalate the war. Ambassador Eikenberry probably pulled his punches: the Afghan president appears foul-tempered, undiplomatic, and downright irrational. Conventional wisdom is hardening around the notion that Karzai is the problem, and the U.S.-led coalition must work around him if it has any hope of succeeding in Afghanistan.

Remember when Karzai was “our man in Kabul,” rather than an obstacle? Here was a rock-solid anti-Taliban leader who could charm both Pashtun warlords and international donors with equal grace. And the West needed him. As RAND analyst Seth Jones argued in July 2008, during the last period of heavy dump-Karzai chatter, “The United States and other NATO countries should stop undermining Karzai now, shore up support for him as the democratically elected president of Afghanistan, and help him show progress.” Calling Karzai “democratically elected” is a bit of a stretch, given the rampant fraud that accompanies elections in Afghanistan. But he is in charge, unless the U.S. is to contemplate the messy prospect of cancelling his government and starting over -- something no one really wants to deal with.

The problem with focusing on Karzai so much is it places the entire onus for success or failure on Karzai, the person, when the bigger problem is the institution of the presidency. Afghanistan has one of the most centralized governments in the world. Karzai is responsible for managing the performance of 34 provincial governors, 400 or so district sub-governors, and all their associated chiefs of police, to say nothing of competing constituencies in Kabul. He personally appoints all government officials down to district administrators, of which there are hundreds. It’s no wonder he is having trouble governing.

Read full article....