A war in which the general doesn't know his enemy is a war lost. The manner in
which the Barack Obama administration is handling its equations with Afghan
President Hamid Karzai suggests Karzai is the US president's enemy number one
in the Hindu Kush, not the insurgents.
The number of dogfights between US special representative Richard Holbrooke and
the Afghan government is now legion. The tussles are watched in regional
capitals with amusement as Holbrooke tirelessly wages his war with Karzai's
leadership. While it is unclear whether this is part of Holbrooke's personal
agenda or Obama's brief, he does carry the Obama
administration's imprimatur.
Holbrooke's latest salvo was his suo moto (on his own initiative)
announcement in Washington soon after returning from a visit to
Kabul that the jirga, or peace council, Karzai was planning to hold on
May 2-4 now stands postponed until after the Afghan leader's visit to
Washington on May 10-14. Holbrooke then went on to announce that the jirga
would be held on May 20.
By all indications, the Afghan government is seething with resentment over
Washington's announcement. Why did Holbrooke usurp the Kabul government's
prerogative to release such details? There can be two reasons. One, Holbrooke
is aging fast and has a failing memory and he genuinely slipped up, which can
happen when people get physically and mentally worn out. Two, he cleverly
undercut Karzai to make the latter look very foolish in the Afghan bazaar.
There is not a shred of evidence that Holbrooke (who celebrates his 69th birthday this Saturday) is becoming senile. The logical
conclusion to be drawn is that Holbrooke deliberately put Karzai on the mat and
decided to do a bit of grandstanding by asserting it is Washington that calls
the shots in the Hindu Kush in matters of war and peace.
Does Obama really need this exasperating vanity contest? Conceivably, Obama's
priority at the present moment ought to be to win the war with a measure of
credibility so that the US's image as a superpower doesn't get tarnished.
In the process, Obama could emerge having fulfilled his own pledges in the 2008
presidential election to bring the "war on terror" to a successful conclusion
and preventing the US from engaging in such futile and costly military
adventures in the future.
The yardstick Obama needs to apply is whether Holbrooke's AfPak diplomacy is
actually operating in sync with his political agenda.
In this regard, Holbrooke has clearly personalized his struggle with Karzai to
an unnecessary extent. This began after a disastrous banquet in the
presidential palace last year when Karzai showed him the door - the US envoy
had attempted to convince the Afghan leader to walk into the sunset.
Ever since that humiliation, Holbrooke has taken it to heart that if the Afghan
leader has a plan of national reconciliation, it must be rubbished and
sabotaged.
Thus, the US took a contrary view of the jirga plan while European
powers, which have a sense of urgency about the "Afghanization" of the war -
politically and militarily - were much more favorably inclined.
Karzai's plan aims at "reintegrating" as many moderate, reconcilable elements
as possible with the national political mainstream. On that basis he plans to
form a broad-based coalition that steers the country towards elections in September that hold reasonable prospects of creating an elected
parliament. The new government may even enjoy credibility in Afghan popular
perceptions, giving a boost to the peace process.
At a minimum, the US should give Karzai a fair chance to go ahead with the plan
to hold the peace council. No harm can come of it, even if Karzai's effort
ultimately proves to be less than perfect. After all, if only to a minimal
extent, the broadening of the national political mainstream can still only help
isolate irreconcilable elements.
Looking back, a similar promising juncture in the Afghan civil war offered
itself exactly 20 years ago, in May 1990, when then Afghan president Mohammad
Najibullah convened a loya jirga, a grand council of tribal leaders, in
Kabul. The vision then was a national reconciliation strategy that involved the
communist party sharing power with the Afghan mujahideen. The loya jirga,
in fact, adopted a new constitution that effectively ended the communist
party's monopoly of executive power.
But the US in its obsessive desire to end the communist debacle in Kabul
connived with Pakistan to decide that nothing should be done that would help
Najibullah, a Soviet protege, pave the way for a national reconciliation in
Afghanistan. It was a historic blunder that led to the intensification of the
civil war, much bloodshed and great instability in the region that ultimately
boomeranged on the US with an epochal tragedy on September 11, 2001.
Like the Bourbons, the US seems to be forgetting nothing and yet remembering
nothing. To inflict a debacle on Karzai may seem an irresistible temptation,
but in the process the US fails to see that another golden opportunity to
polarize the Afghan opinion in favor of peace and reconciliation may once again
be lost.
There are Europeans who seem support Karzai's plan, but they appear helpless.
"For the EU [European Union], perhaps one of the best examples of 20th century
reconciliation, we see a great meaning and importance in this process,"
Vygaudas Usackas, head of the EU delegation in Kabul, said recently.
"It won't be an event. It will launch a process which can lead to a peace in
the country,'' he said. ''Any reconciliation process will take time before the
seeds will grow up.''
The jirga stands in contrast to the manner in which the US embassy in
Kabul is manipulating Afghan lawmakers to make parliament a focal point of
opposition to Karzai. The theater of the absurd is being stretched too far.
A fistful of dollars can indeed take Uncle Sam very far in the Hindu Kush
today. But the issue is to what end the US strategic interests are served by
egging on Afghan parliamentarians who dread the dissolution of the current
parliament (which has outlived its constitutional lifespan) and the election of
a new legislative body?
Clearly, the bulk of Afghan parliamentarians may face serious difficulties in
getting re-elected. House Speaker Yunus Qanooni may be feeling that his own
political future looks uncertain. Thus, the American embassy in Kabul has a
good chance to persuade the current parliament to put obstacles on Karzai's
path on any conceivable issue.
But does Afghanistan need such a constitutional crisis at this point?
Karzai has agreed to a request from the United Nations for two
foreigners to serve, with veto powers, in the election commission
for the upcoming parliamentary polls. Karzai has also appointed a credible
figure to chair the commission. These acts underscore Karzai's willingness to
be reasonable and to go the extra mile to win international legitimacy for the
Afghan democratic process.
These are remarkable steps towards transparency in power-sharing and
constitutional rule by an embattled leader standing at the barricades.
In fairness to Karzai, Obama should give him a free hand to enhance his image
among his own countrymen as an Afghan leader rather than as Holbrooke's
sidekick. The upcoming meeting at the Oval Office offers a final opportunity to
steer the Afghan political process as a collaborative venture between the US
and the Afghan government, while giving it the appearance that it is genuinely
Afghan-led.
Holbrooke's media performance in Kabul last week was appalling and any
self-respecting Afghan leader would resent such behavior from foreigners.
Holbrooke unilaterally read out Karzai's visit itinerary. As a professional
diplomat, he would know that Afghanistan has a fully fledged Foreign Ministry
which would have liked to be seen as formally outlining the itinerary for its
head of state's visit to the US capital.
American novelists William J Lederer and Eugene Burdick had a famous term for
how US viceroys sometimes look in the eyes of foreigners: The Ugly American.
That was a long time ago in 1950s Southeast Asia. But the image persists.
The sad part is that the image of the ugly American is diametrically opposite
to the extraordinary perceptions in world opinion of Obama himself as a
statesman and a humanist.
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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