Iran
queries Obama's pact with Karzai By M K Bhadrakumar
Washington gave
Afghan President Hamid Karzai over 18 months to
bring himself to agree to the United
States-Afghanistan strategic partnership
agreement, but hardly a fortnight to get the
document ratified by his parliament.
Karzai's motivation to get the job done is
not in doubt, since his own political future
hinges on his dexterity to persuade Afghan
parliamentarians to endorse the pact.
And
only after parliament's endorsement can US
President Barack Obama submit the document to the
US Congress. The pact is intended to be the
highlight of the summit meeting of the North
Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) in Chicago on
May 21.
Just about 10 days left, and
Karzai is under enormous pressure. The popular
feeling among Afghans about the pact is a great
"unknown unknown", to
borrow the words of former US defense secretary
Donald Rumsfeld.
Afghan officials
announced in April that they had endorsed a final
draft of the strategic partnership agreement that
will make certain the US commitment in the country
for at least 10 years after the 2014 withdrawal of
foreign troops deadline and the transition of
security to local forces. Few other details were
given.
Destiny strikes The
Taliban may have helped matters a bit. Their
spectacular attacks in Kabul and other places
recently created an overall awareness about the
fragile security situation and Karzai's best hope
is that the people will appreciate that for the
foreseeable future, Western military backing
becomes critical for the survival of the Afghan
state.
Karzai is risking that this new
"awareness" subsumes the popular feelings against
foreign occupation of their country. Things were
going rather well for Karzai for the first three
days since US President Barack Obama came to Kabul
on May 1 to sign the pact. It all seemed a done
thing that he would navigate the US-Afghan pact
through parliament and start packing his bags for
the journey to Chicago and commence a new chapter
in his political career.
But then, destiny
struck on May 4. A dozen or so Afghan civilians,
including five children, were killed on that
fateful Friday evening when NATO-led forces
carried out two separate air strikes in the
southern province of Helmand. NATO repeated the
crime two days later with a second air strike in
the northwestern province of Badghis. Karzai's
office admitted that NATO also struck in Logar and
Kapisa provinces in eastern Afghanistan in the
weekend, killing dozens of civilians.
Karzai promptly went into damage-control
mode by calling in the US commander, General John
Allen, and the US ambassador to Afghanistan, Ryan
Crocker. He told them that the strikes were
"unacceptable". Karzai's office also issued a
crisply worded press release, according to which,
"President Karzai said if the lives of Afghans are
not safe, then the strategic cooperation between
the two countries will lose its meaning and
concept."
Indeed, the raison d'etre of the
pact lies in the US's political obligation and
military commitment to make Afghanistan a safe
place for Afghans. Karzai has been made to look a
very impotent leader.
Karzai controls a
fair number of parliamentarians who will dance to
his tune, but they fall short of a majority.
Karzai is so uneasy that he even took the
extraordinary step recently of stopping a visit to
Kabul by prominent US congressman Dama
Rohrabacher, who is a senior member of the House
Foreign Affairs Committee, to meet Afghan
opposition leaders. Rohrabacher was denied a visa
and prevented from boarding a flight from Dubai to
Kabul. "[US Secretary of State] Hillary [Clinton]
was very clear that this came from Karzai,"
Rohrabacher later said.
Rohrabacher has
supported the demand of the Afghan opposition
(belonging to the erstwhile Northern Alliance)
that Karzai should share power with parliament.
The incident showed Karzai's uneasy standoff with
the opposition represented in parliament. Suffice
to say, Karzai faces the biggest challenge of his
political career when he submits the US-Afghan
pact for endorsement by parliament in Kabul.
Tehran challenges ... But Karzai
still has a few tricks in his pocket. On Saturday,
he struck at Iran. Afghan security forces nabbed
the Kabul bureau chief of Iran's semi-official
Fars news agency, Abdulvahed Hakimi, and took him
to an undisclosed destination. It was a
provocative move and inconceivable without
clearance from a high level in the Kabul set-up.
Media leaks have since made out that
Hakimi is charged with spying. Radio Free
Europe/Radio Liberty soon began flashing reports
in Dari and Pashtu about Afghan security having
cracked a spy ring allegedly working for Iran.
Unsurprisingly, Karzai has opted for a
huge diversionary tactic to turn attention away
from the NATO air strike by whipping up Afghan
nationalism. Meanwhile, the Karzai government also
leveled allegations that the Iranian ambassador in
Kabul, Abolfazi Zohrehvand, tried to influence
Afghan parliamentarians to oppose the US-Afghan
pact. On Tuesday, the ambassador was summoned to
the Afghan Foreign Ministry.
Simultaneously, a media campaign has
begun, alleging that Tehran proposes to expel
Afghan refugees living in Iran as a mark of
displeasure against the Kabul government over the
security pact. This is a highly emotive issue
within Afghanistan with high potential to incite
anti-Iran sentiments.
Tehran furiously
protested that it had been a generous host for
more than two million Afghan refugees for over two
decades with little help from the international
community and has always been of the opinion that
their repatriation could only take place with the
"establishment of sustainable peace and security"
within Afghanistan.
But the damage is
done. Meanwhile, Tehran has broken its silence
over the US-Afghan pact. On Saturday, in a strong
statement, the Iranian Foreign Ministry warned
against the deployment of US troops in
Afghanistan. The statement said:
The "unclear roles defined for the US forces
and their military bases" under the pact
constitute "major sources of concern for Iran
and other regional countries".
The pact cannot solve Afghanistan's security
problems and will further destabilize the
country and worsen insecurity.
The Islamic Republic of Iran believes that
the establishment of peace and security in
Afghanistan is possible through the total
withdrawal of the foreign forces, the closure of
military bases and dialogue among the Afghans
within the framework of the High Peace Council.
Evidently, Kabul anticipated
that Tehran would at some point come out against
the security pact and tried to pre-empt Iran's
capacity to rally the Afghan opposition.
Interestingly, on Tuesday, even as the Foreign
Ministry in Kabul summoned the Iranian ambassador,
Karzai dispatched National Security Adviser Rangin
Dadfar Spanta (who negotiated the pact with
Washington) to the western Afghan city of Herat to
respond to Iranian criticism.
Herat has
traditionally been heavily under Iranian
influence. Spanta defiantly underscored that the
pact with the US was precisely intended to
withstand threats such as from Tehran. He said:
Iranian officials told Afghan
senators not to approve the pact or else
Afghanistan will face problems. We reply to them
that it is for this very reason that we signed
the agreement ... What I see in Iran is
nationalism and radicalism, which tries to
influence the region from a religious point of
view. [Iran's] politics have never been
recognized globally ... Afghans should guarantee
their children's future with peace and think
only about their national interest.
Karzai's choice of the mild-mannered
Spanta for the mission to Herat is interesting.
Spanta is a Sunni Tajik and Herat is predominantly
a Sunni Tajik city. By playing the sectarian card,
Karzai evidently hopes to cast his net wide and
"neutralize" the Shi'ite Iranian sway over the
people of Herat.
… Obama's gamble
The Iranian ambassador in Kabul lost no
time to respond to Spanta. He urged on Wednesday
that the Karzai government should pay heed to
Iran's concerns about the US-Afghan pact.
Referring to his meeting at the Afghan Foreign
Ministry the previous day, he disclosed:
The point that I made to the Afghan
officials was that in our view the consequences
of this [US-Afghan] agreement are not restricted
to Afghanistan and will have regional and
trans-regional impact and can disturb the
regional security structure. We asked the Afghan
officials to reconsider it [the security pact]
more carefully. The Afghans should take our
concerns into consideration and make their
decisions while considering the Afghan people's
interests and the security considerations of the
regional countries.
Clearly, the
ambassador has pushed the envelope by claiming
that Tehran's stance is shared by other regional
capitals. He also reached above Spanta's and
Karzai's heads to bring onto the table the
interests of the Afghan nation.
The
Iranian demand for a review of the pact all but
sets a collision course with Karzai. If the
calculation was that amid the preoccupations over
the P5+1 (Iran Six") talks on Tehran's nuclear
program in Baghdad on May 23, Tehran would have no
spare time to pay attention to the US-Afghan pact,
that isn't the case. Evidently, Tehran's threat
perceptions from the long-term US military
presence on Iran's eastern borders run far too
deep.
Tehran has probably consulted other
regional powers. Both the Foreign Ministry
statement in Tehran on Saturday and the Iranian
ambassador's remarks in Kabul on Wednesday
referred to regional opinion weighing against the
US-Afghan security pact. Although no other
regional capital has spoken against the US-Afghan
pact in the past 10 days, Tehran's claim suggests
that the silence is merely tactical.
It is
a claim difficult to disprove. The big question is
going to be the nature of the mood swing among
Afghan parliamentarians. Tehran has brought into
focus that the US-Afghan pact is controversial
among Afghanistan's neighbors. Iran wields
influence over certain constituencies within
Afghanistan cutting across regional or sectarian
and religious divides. (Tehran has much influence
with the insurgent Hezb-i-Islami leader Gulbuddin
Hekmatyar, who lived for almost five years in Iran
in exile in the late 1990s until his return to
Afghanistan in 2002.)
It is virtually
unthinkable what would happen to Obama's political
standing if the Afghan parliament failed to ratify
the security pact. Politicians can make fatal
errors of judgment. Obama gambled by traveling to
Kabul to sign the pact just ahead of the formal
commencement of his re-election.
The
temptation to derive political mileage likely got
the better of him. Obama's political life
testifies that he has usually won his gambles. But
Afghan parliamentarians could punctuate that lucky
run.
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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