Karzai grabs a tiger by the
tail By M K Bhadrakumar
Afghan President Hamid Karzai has
commandeered the political debate in his country
just as important issues are poised to come to the
forefront concerning the country's political setup
and constitutional processes following the
parliamentary and provincial council elections of
September 18.
Karzai has seized the
three-week interlude before the outcome of the
elections will be known for channeling the
political debate. But is it feasible to ignore the
warning signs regarding Afghanistan's highly
uncertain political future?
Ostensibly,
Karzai has become a dissenter sniping at the
US-led "war on terror" in Afghanistan. Surely,
that is big-time news. He told the international
media in Kabul on Tuesday, "The nature of
the
war on terror in Afghanistan has now changed to a
point that I don't think there is a big need for
military activity anymore." Specifically, he said,
"The use of air power is something that may not be
very effective now." And he added, "No coalition
forces should go to Afghan homes without the
authorization of the Afghan government."
Karzai has justified his call for a change
in approach on the part of the US-led coalition
forces on the grounds that "Afghanistan now has a
constitution, a president, a parliament and a
nation fully participating in its destiny," and
secondly, "We do not think there is a serious
terrorism challenge emanating in Afghanistan."
In an apparent reference to Pakistan's
continued support of the Taliban, Karzai also
counseled the US military that henceforth it
should focus on cutting off the flow of militants
by concentrating "on where the terrorists are
trained, on their bases, on the supply to them, on
the money coming to them". The largely peaceful
conduct of last week's elections itself held, in
Karzai's estimation, the "proof" that al-Qaeda had
been conclusively defeated in Afghanistan.
Reacting to the recent Pakistani proposal
for erecting a fence along the
Afghanistan-Pakistan border to check infiltration,
Karzai said he rejected the proposal. Of all the
reasons against the efficacy of such a fence,
Karzai singled out the hugely controversial
argument that a fence would be extremely difficult
to justify as the existing Durand Line (as the
border is called) already "divided tribes and
families"; it was "separating people, not
preventing terrorism".
Karzai's statements
cut in different directions all at once. He knows
that putting some distance between himself and the
Americans, however contrived it might be, will be
useful for his political standing domestically.
Such a posture seeks to imply that he is not
beholden to the Americans, and that will go down
well with his Afghan audience, especially among
the majority Pashtuns.
Even regionally, it
will create an impression that finally Karzai is
stepping out of the American shadow. Foreigners,
who know the sturdy, independent Afghan temper,
will begin to speculate on the inevitability of
such a turn in Karzai's alignment with Washington.
Some might rush to the judgement that Karzai is
picking up signals that the US is looking to get
out of Afghanistan.
Due to the
overwhelming impression that he is America's
favorite choice, Karzai has had to take part of
the blame for the excesses of the US military's
operations in the Pashtun belt. It now serves
Karzai's purpose vis-a-vis his Pashtun audience to
dissociate himself from the odious nature of US
military operations. (Curiously, even as Karzai
was speaking in Kabul, the commander of the
20,000-strong US-led forces in Afghanistan,
Lieutenant General Karl Eikenberry, told the
Western media, "We can expect more fighting in the
weeks ahead. We are staying on the offensive
against the enemies of Afghanistan, and we will
continue that process throughout the fall and
throughout the winter.")
The Americans may
or may not heed Karzai's advice about resetting
the course of their military operations. In all
probability, they will not. How could an American
soldier fight without air cover? But what is quite
evident is that Karzai is reaching out to the
Pashtun constituency. The imperative for doing so
hardly needs elaboration. Karzai needs to put
together a Pashtun power base.
Karzai will
have correctly drawn the conclusion that the poor
turnout of voters in last week's elections
constituted a clear-cut popular verdict by itself
on the political dispensation in Kabul. The
turnout of 50% represented a whopping 25% drop
from the turnout in the presidential elections
last October that legitimized Karzai's position.
The blame for this growing disenchantment
with democratic institutions on the part of
ordinary Afghans cannot be put on the Taliban (or
its alleged Pakistani mentors). In Kabul itself,
where security arrangements were thorough and
extensive, people were simply not interested in
casting their votes. They were indifferent to what
the parliament was about. Admittedly, it amounted
to a severe indictment of the process of
"democratic governance" that the people had come
to experience during the one-year period since the
presidential elections last October.
From
all accounts, there is a high possibility that the
non-Pashtun coalition led by Tajik leader Yunus
Qanooni may do well in the parliamentary election.
Qanooni has tapped into the deep alienation among
non-Pashtun communities, which see the Kabul
government as pandering to Pashtun sectarian
interests. Karzai is, therefore, making a bid to
get the disparate Pashtun elements to coalesce
under his leadership - a Pashtun coalition
comprising erstwhile elements of the Taliban, the
Khalqi wing of the Afghan communists, and the
jihadi groups like Hizb-i-Islami and Ittehad. It
may be a rainbow coalition pandering to Pashtun
chauvinism, but a coalition nonetheless.
Will a Pashtun coalition effectively
forestall Qanooni's bid to seize the high ground
in parliament? It seems the attempt is in that
direction. The fact is that the government, in the
coming period, is not going to reflect the
political parties, but will comprise ethnic and
factional groupings that are highly amenable to
manipulation.
Looking back, it was a
deliberate move on the part of Karzai to spurn the
advice rendered by the United Nations and most
diplomats that the Afghan parliamentary and
provincial elections should to be party-based. He
anticipated that only through an electoral system
that undermined political parties (and thus the
ability of an opposition to emerge) could power be
concentrated overwhelmingly in the hands of the
president in the period ahead.
To what
degree this strategy devolving on a highly
centralized presidential system of government
enjoys the acquiescence of the Americans is
difficult to tell, but it is a moot point. What
matters is that Karzai, being a native Afghan, can
be expected to know full well that
over-centralization in a highly fragmented polity
will be impossible to achieve and will be a sure
recipe for a non-functioning government. This was
a calculus set by the former American ambassador
Zalmay Khalilzad. Karzai had a historic choice to
set a new course in the September 18 polls, but he
was either incapable or unwilling to do so.
There is a pervasive feeling of uneasiness
in the non-Pashtun areas of Afghanistan that the
results of the parliamentary elections, too, will
be gerrymandered. The priority at this point,
therefore, ought to have been to ensure that the
election results truly reflected the popular wish,
and to begin to define what real powers will be
vested in the parliament. A consensus needed to be
built about the upcoming political institutions,
which is important for isolating recalcitrant
forces and eventually reducing them to residual
elements. This is probably the last opportunity
for ensuring that a functional political system
evolves in Afghanistan.
Almost all
observers of Afghanistan, including long-time
personal friends and well-wishers of Karzai, have
been showing signs of exasperation. In a scathing
criticism recently, the well-known author on
Afghanistan, Ahmed Rashid, wrote: "Karzai has
failed to foster the spirit of nation-building ...
many of his ministers have gained reputations for
rampant corruption ... Karzai's immediate team
offers little example in the way of sacrifice and
service that could inspire the institutions or the
nation. The United Nations special envoy to the
country, Jean Arnault, recently said that
Afghanistan's population is exasperated over the
inability of the bureaucracy and the judiciary to
function as it should."
Rashid concluded:
"Thus, there is a high probability that the new
parliament, rather than being a venue for
discussing development goals, will be an
overheated venue for anti-Karzai criticism."
Der Spiegel featured a report last week on
the chaotic situation in the northern region of
Takhar-Badakhshan provinces - a region where the
Taliban, incidentally, has no influence
whatsoever. With nightfall, even well-armed German
troops of the international forces posted there
become afraid of the dark as drug-traffickers
ferrying their precious cargo across the border
into Tajikistan have the run of the place. Yet
that region used to be an oasis of stability, even
during the violent years of the Afghan jihad in
the 1980s and the unruly mujahideen period that
followed.
M K Bhadrakumar is a
former Indian career diplomat who has served in
Islamabad, Kabul, Tashkent and Moscow.
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