A tipping point comes when confusion arises about the identity of the adversary
on the battlefield. Who is the United States' number one enemy in the Hindu
Kush: the Taliban and al-Qaeda or Afghan President Hamid Karzai?
United States President Barack Obama isn't a "hands-on" president. He has
scores of preoccupations. In addition to Yemen, The New York Times reported
last week that six million Americans - one in 50 people in the US population -
are living with no income other than food stamps. Like its economy, America's
tattered image also needs repair. Muslim anger is rising. Ranging from the
nuclear non-proliferation agenda to Iran, from the reset of
relations with Russia to the surge of China, and from smart power to
pre-emptive wars, Obama's agenda is at an impasse.
Yet Obama should urgently re-engage with the Afghan war. He said his piece
brilliantly on December 1 and then moved on. But the subalterns resumed the
wrong war - the covert year-long war of attrition with Karzai - rather than the
eight-year-old war against the Taliban and al-Qaeda.
They have an old score to settle with Karzai. He defied their intricate plan to
oust him and have a brand new Pashtun from Washington implanted in the
presidential palace. Such defiance cannot go unpunished. There is an imperative
need to take control of the Kabul government. Obama is about to jack up the
budget for Afghanistan. A scramble has broken out in anticipation of the gravy
train that will run through the Hindu Kush.
Billions of dollars are being put into the pipeline, and if a few hundred
million disappear into a black hole, no one will be the wiser as to how or when
it happened. It happened in Iraq. The US's "war contractors" are already a
legion. Not only American contractors but Afghan high-flyers also make shrewd
war profiteers. The Nation recently featured an account naming close relatives
of the Afghan parliament speaker, Younus Qanooni, and Defense Minister Abdul
Wardak.
Obviously, Washington wants to hold the purse strings, whereas Karzai wants
donors to route aid through the government. He has a point. He is getting the
brickbats for "corruption" while American contractors and their Afghan
associates keep the money. The outgoing United Nations special envoy for
Afghanistan, Kai Eide of Norway, also stated in his report to the UN Security
Council on January 6 that the challenge was to "expand the reach of the
[Afghan] government instead of continuing to rely on parallel international
structures".
Beyond sleaze or the issues of "capacity-building" in the Afghan government,
there is also a serious political side. Afghan politicians, including
"warlords", are mesmerized by the Midas touch Washington gives to their lives
overnight if only they sing the American tune. Thus, parliament turned down
Karzai's cabinet nominees, except for those who were known as America's
nominees.
The US-funded media in Pashtu and Dari have gone to town gleefully projecting
the "shameful defeat" of Karzai. Western media went overboard. There is no
shred of evidence that Afghans are so naive as to overlook the US muscle-play
behind their parliament's decision. The ordinary Afghan is so hopelessly bogged
down in the business of day-to-day survival that he does not care two hoots for
Western-style democracy or pork-barrel politics.
Karzai defiantly reacted last weekend in an interview with Qatar-based
al-Jazeera television:
With the international community, I don't need
to have their favor. They are here for a purpose: the fight on terror. And we
are working with our purpose, which is the stability and safety of Afghanistan.
The international community, especially the West, they must respect Afghanistan
and its government, and understand that we are a people, we are a country, we
have a history, we have interests, we have pride, we have dignity. Our poverty
must not become a means of ridicule and insult to us.
We are not going to ask for more cash. We are going to ask the international
community to end night-time raids on Afghan homes. We are going to ask them to
stop arresting Afghans. We are going to ask them to reduce and eliminate
civilian casualties. That's what I want NATO [North Atlantic Treaty
Organization] countries to understand with us: that the war on terror is not in
Afghan villages. It's not in the pursuit of every man that's wearing a turban
and has a beard.
The Obama administration's war
with Karzai is edging toward an unhappy ending.
Such denouements turn out to be messy. Obama risks
ridicule on the world stage. The silly part of the
war is that it falls out of Alexander Pope's
Rape of the Lock
- a contest among great friends
rising from trivialities that got dramatized into a feud and soon assumed the
character of a sprawling mock-epic on the folly of giving primacy to appearance
over substance.
What is the US's grievance about Karzai? Essentially, it boils down to a single
point. The New York Times in an editorial narrated the US demand: "He [Karzai]
also should work hard to find a place for Ashraf Ghani, former finance minister
and World Bank official who is well regarded internationally. He [Ghani] has
sensible ideas about developing a national strategy for improving governance
and for adopting transparent criteria for choosing credible people for
government jobs. He could bring credibility and competence to a government
short on both."
It stretched credulity that there is only one able and discerning Afghan today
on the planet who has leadership qualities. Assuming the US wins, what would be
the net gains of "regime change"? The Obama administration would have removed
from power someone a previous administration thought was a US puppet but
eventually turned out to have a mind of his own. But the factors that drove
someone as affable, sociable and cooperative as Karzai into a corner will still
not go away. And history will only repeat itself.
Second, for argument's sake, even if Washington ultimately foists all its
English-speaking Afghan cronies on Karzai's cabinet, what follows thereafter?
Ghani himself failed to impress Afghan voters, including in his native region.
The US will only end up creating a government that pulls in different
directions. Perhaps that's the intention - divide and rule. Perhaps only the
cronies can take unilateral decisions favoring US companies with lucrative
contracts in the mining or telecommunications sector.
The US risks finding itself in a political quagmire. The Afghan
parliamentarians that the US-driven elections in 2005 catapulted onto the
center stage have completed their term. Karzai insists that fresh parliamentary
elections be held as scheduled in May. The US, on the other hand, is petrified
that the election may reflect the rising curve of popular mood against foreign
occupation. Another debilitating phase of political skullduggery is probably
commencing in Kabul. Karzai seems determined to "Afghanize" the parliamentary
elections.
The Taliban are closely watching the US's war with Karzai. Afghans do not
respect foreigners whose friendship lacks consistency, though they may never
quite wear their contempt on their sleeves for such lower forms of life.
The US's war with Karzai could dearly cost the region. The interests of
regional stability demand that Obama orders an immediate ceasefire. The
sensible thing would be that he visits Kabul and initiates the armistice. At
any rate, one year is a very long period for the commander-in-chief not to have
visited a battlefield where he has deployed in the region of 100,000 troops.
Ambassador M K Bhadrakumar was a career diplomat in the Indian Foreign
Service. His assignments included the Soviet Union, South Korea, Sri Lanka,
Germany, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Uzbekistan, Kuwait and Turkey.
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