Karzai May Be Liability as Obamas Partner In New Afghan Plan
Hailed as a standard-bearer of democracy after the post- Sept. 11 ouster of the Taliban regime in 2001, Afghan President Hamid Karzai lost his luster as corruption mounted and security deteriorated. His legitimacy is now in question after an Aug. 20 election; European Union monitors and United Nations turnout estimates suggest as many as a third of the 54.6 percent of ballots for him may be fake.
The outcome “is central to the question of whether you send more troops and invest in an enhanced counter-insurgency, which requires a credible Afghan partner,” says Peter Galbraith, a U.S. diplomat fired last month as deputy chief of the UNs Afghanistan mission for accusing the organization of withholding vote-fraud evidence.
Karzai is favored to prevail in a recount thats under way or a run-off with his second-place challenger, former Foreign Minister Abdullah Abdullah, 49, who trailed by 27 percentage points in the initial tally.
Obamas only choice may be to shore up Karzais credibility by pushing him to crack down on corruption and lawlessness, which are “doing more to delegitimize the government and embolden the insurgency than anything else,” says Alexander Thier, director for Afghanistan and Pakistan at the United States Institute of Peace in Washington.
The U.S. should link aid to anti-graft rules, train local ombudsmen and investigators, and deny visas and freeze bank accounts of people involved in corruption and their families, Thier says.
Substantial Changes
Obama must “make clear that there are going to have to be very substantial changes,” Galbraith says. He has refused to comment on alleged election fraud while ballots are being vetted and said hell review his strategy after results are certified.
Kai Eide, top UN envoy to Afghanistan, acknowledged at an Oct. 11 news conference that there was “significant fraud” at some voting stations and denied he sought to conceal it.
Karzai is “necessary but not sufficient for Afghanistans success,” says Zalmay Khalilzad, the Afghan-born former U.S. ambassador to Kabul under President George W. Bush. The U.S. must assist him by eliminating Taliban havens in Pakistan, improving how aid is distributed and implementing a new military strategy, he says. Obama, 48, is considering a recommendation by U.S. war commander General Stanley McChrystal to add to the 68,000 troops the U.S. will have there by year-end.
No Secret
Vice President Joe Biden, an early Karzai champion, makes no secret of his disappointment in him. While Karzai enjoyed regular videoconferences with Bush, he has met with Obama only once this year.
Even his garments projected a message of unity: a grey lambskin cap worn by ethnic Uzbeks and a green or purple cape of northern tribesmen over a Western jacket and Afghan tunic. He was chosen as transitional leader at a December 2001 conference in Bonn. Afghans elected him three years later.
A repeated failing of U.S. foreign policy has been to project American interests onto a single leader and feel cheated if he falls short, says Steve Coll, author of a Pulitzer Prize- winning book about Afghanistan. Its fantasy to think any president could extend government authority throughout a poor and tribal nation devastated by 30 years of war, he says.
Local Authorities
A flawed Afghan president shouldnt be an excuse for scaling back involvement, says U.S. Senator Bob Corker, a Tennessee Republican who observed the August voting. “Weve got to start working out in the provinces” with local authorities, he says.
Afghanistans successes get little attention in the debate over war costs and casualties. With international help, Karzais government multiplied the number of students in classrooms and created from scratch an army, health-care system and rural- development program, according to a 2007 United Nations report.
Karzai has blamed bottlenecks in aid, rugged terrain and a dearth of skilled public servants for his inability to expand services into insurgent-plagued regions.
“Whats been accomplished is a shared accomplishment and whats been a failure is a shared failure,” says Said Jawad, Afghanistans ambassador to Washington.