afghanistan's uncertain future-playing with fire 2-1-2014

8/12/2019 Afghanistan's Uncertain Future-Playing With Fire 2-1-2014

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Afghanistans uncertain future-Playing with fireHamid Karzais vilification of America is risking his countrys security

The Economist1 February 2014

THANKS to its bewildering president, Afghanistan has seen relations with the United States

plunge to new lows just two months before a presidential election. If Hamid Karzai cannot reach

an agreement with America for some troops to stay, then NATO is scheduled to pull out

completely by the end of the year. Thus, though Mr Karzai will step down at the end of a

possibly drawn-out process of choosing his successor, his unpredictability, and his desire to

settle scores before going, threaten his countrys interests far into the future.

Confirmation of serious trouble came first in November, on the occasion of a loya jirga, a grand

assembly of 2,500 community leaders and tribal elders. The meeting was convened to approve a

bilateral security agreement (BSA) with America that will allow a small number of foreign

troops to continue training and assisting Afghan security forces. Without their presence, many

Afghans fear that flows of foreign aid will dry up and that, unable to resist the Taliban, the state

might collapse.

The BSA had taken nearly a year to negotiate, and the loya jirgaoverwhelmingly endorsed it.

Yet Mr Karzai used the occasion to attack his American allies for myriad perceived failings and

to announce new conditions for his signing the pact. He also suggested that the responsibility for

doing so should probably fall to his successor. (Mr Karzai is constitutionally barred from

contesting another term.)


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Since then, Mr Karzai has continued to give free rein to his resentments. On January 25th he held

a press conference in which he excoriated the Americans further. He accused them of engaging

in a psychological war in their efforts to seal the BSA and acting as a rival rather than as a

friend. For good measure, Mr Karzai insisted that America must start serious peace talks with the

Talibanan impossibility, given the Talibans hostility to the BSA. If theAmericans would notaccept his conditions, he added, they can leave anytime and we will continue our lives.

Mr Karzai has also gone out of his way to raise the temperature over two other issues. The first is

over civilian deaths from a NATO bombing strike on January 15th on the village of Wazghar in

Parwan province north of the capital, Kabul. The second is a dispute over the release order of 88

detainees at Bagram prison, which America handed over to Afghanistan last year. Angry

American officials say that 17 prisoners to be freed were involved in making bombs that killed

11 Afghan soldiers and they claim that most of the other detainees also have blood on their

hands. But Mr Karzai describes Bagram as a place where innocent people are tortured and

insulted and made dangerous criminals.

The row over what exactly happened at Wazghar has become both toxic and farcical. NATO

says it was the Afghan army that called in the strike when its soldiers were under heavy fire from

Taliban positions in two village compounds. NATO acknowledges that civilians, including two

children, died in the action. But it says the lives of dozens of Afghan soldiers and a handful of

American advisers were at risk. As it is, an Afghan and an American soldier were killed. But a

report commissioned by Mr Karzai asserted that 13 villagers had died after relentless bombing,

with not a Taliban fighter to be seen. America, in other words, was guilty of a war crime.

When local news outlets and theNew York Timesquestioned the veracity of the report, carried

out by a virulently anti-American MP, the government brought several villagers to Kabul to back

up its claims. The move backfired. A photograph was produced purporting to show a funeral for

dead villagers. But some in the media thought the photograph looked familiar. In reality, it had

been taken a couple of hundred miles from Wazgharin 2009.

To the consternation of American officials, Mr Karzai now appears to be compiling a list of

insurgent-style attacks which he claims the Americans were behind as part of a plot to undermine

his government and destabilise the country. The list apparently includes an attack on January

17th on a Kabul restaurant that killed 13 foreign civilians and at least seven Afghans and had

been immediately claimed by the Taliban.

Mr Karzai may even believe some of his outlandish assertions. Cocooned in the presidential

palace, he receives delegations of elders from around the country only too happy to peddle

eccentric theories. On January 27th James Cunningham, Americas ambassador in Kabul,

portrayed Mr Karzais views as deeply conspiratorial and divorced from reality.


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Mr Karzais behaviour is, unsurprisingly, having a corrosive effect in Washington, DC. Last

week Congress halved proposed development aid to Afghanistan for the coming year, ruled out

big new infrastructure projects carried out by the armed forces, and cut by three-fifths the

Pentagons $2.6 billion bid to add critical capabilities to the Afghan security forces. The White

House appears to have accepted the cuts without a murmur.

How much President Barack Obamas exasperation with Mr Karzai now threatens Americas

commitment to a security agreement is unclear. In his state of the union speech on January 28th,

Mr Obama said that, with an agreement, America would stand by Afghanistan and keep on a

small force of Americans who, with NATO allies, would train and help Afghan forces in other

ways and go after what remains of al-Qaeda.

He appears to have heeded advice he received from the senior American commander in

Afghanistan, General Joseph Dunford. General Dunford took the unusual step of going to the

White House a day before the speech to plead for the president to agree to keep 10,000 Americantroops in Afghanistan after 2014 (backed by a further 2,000, mainly from Germany and Italy).

General Dunfords plan is supported by the defence secretary, Chuck Hagel; the secretary of

state, John Kerry; the CIA director, John Brennan; and the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff,

General Martin Dempsey. They argue that this force is the minimum that can accomplish

anything and still be capable of protecting itself.

In a bid to make the plan more palatable to Mr Obama, General Dunford suggested that the

enduring force need only stay for two years rather thanthe possible decade envisaged by the

BSA. That would allow the president, on leaving office in 2017, to claim that he had brought all

of Americas troops home from two wars. But other voices in the White House, not least Joe

Biden, the vice-president, would prefer a much smaller force, devoted only to counter-terrorism.

The longer the signing of the BSA is delayed, the more likely the enduring force is to be whittled

down. Military advice would then quickly swing to the zero option of no troops at all.

What the Americans, and indeed many Afghans, appear to be hoping is that even if Mr Karzai

must now be written off as hostile, his successor will want to sign the security pact. It looks a

reasonable bet. According to Lotfullah Najafizada of Tolo News, the BSA is supported by most

Afghan government ministers, the heads of the security forces and all the main presidential-

election candidates.

A two-month election campaign opens on February 2nd, and most pundits see it as a four-horse

race between a former foreign minister, Abdullah Abdullah, a candidate in 2009 and no ally of

Mr Karzai, and three others who hope to gain the outgoing presidents still-useful endorsement:

Ashraf Ghani, a former World Bank official; Zalmay Rassoul, another former foreign minister;

and Qayum Karzai, an elder brother of the president. All are considered more pro-Western than


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Mr Karzai and understand the importance of keeping some foreign troops in the country to help

the fast-improving but still fragile Afghan army in its dogged fight against the Taliban.

The worry, however, is that the election will go to a second round and that no winner will

emerge until June. The new president will then have to concentrate on putting together a

government seen as reasonably legitimate and competent. That could push the likely date for

signing the security agreement to early August, dragging out the uncertainty (there are already

signs of capital flight) and frustrating military planning. American and other NATO commanders

still think it will be doableso long as Mr Obamas patience holds up in the face of Mr Karzais

relentless provocations.

http://www.economist.com/news/asia/21595472-hamid-karzais-vilification-america-risking-his-

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afghanistan's uncertain future-playing with fire 2-1-2014

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