[R-G] Afghan Leader Finds Himself Hero No More

[Yoshie Furuhashi]

America does its imperialism as it does its capitalism: when a
business fails, blame employees.  Mr. Karzai may have sealed his fate
by finally coming up with a sensible strategy last year and beginning
to show signs of independent thinking: "At a news conference in Kabul,
the Afghan capital, Mr. Karzai coupled his offer of safe passage to
Mr. Omar with a warning to the Western nations that support his
government, saying that if they opposed an assurance of safety for Mr.
Omar they would have to remove Mr. Karzai as president or withdraw
their troops from Afghanistan. . . . Mr. Karzai has recently toughened
his tone when speaking of the American-led coalition in ways that
appear to have been aimed at gaining wider support at home. Among
other things, he has demanded that the coalition make more measured
use of air power to reduce civilian casualties from bomb and missile
attacks. With his warning that he would guarantee Mr. Omar's safety,
he appeared to have taken one step further in marking his distance
from the coalition" (at
<http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/17/world/asia/17afghan.html>). --
Yoshie

<http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/08/world/asia/08karzai.html>
February 8, 2009
Afghan Leader Finds Himself Hero No More
By DEXTER FILKINS

KABUL, Afghanistan — A foretaste of what would be in store for
President Hamid Karzai after the election of a new American
administration came last February, when Joseph R. Biden Jr., then a
senator, sat down to a formal dinner at the palace during a visit
here.

Between platters of lamb and rice, Mr. Biden and two other American
senators questioned Mr. Karzai about corruption in his government,
which, by many estimates, is among the worst in the world. Mr. Karzai
assured Mr. Biden and the other senators that there was no corruption
at all and that, in any case, it was not his fault.

The senators gaped in astonishment. After 45 minutes, Mr. Biden threw
down his napkin and stood up.

"This dinner is over," Mr. Biden announced, according to one of the
people in the room at the time. And the three senators walked out,
long before the appointed time.

Today, of course, Mr. Biden is the vice president.

The world has changed for Mr. Karzai, and for Afghanistan, too. A
White House favorite — a celebrity in flowing cape and dark gray fez —
in each of the seven years that he has led this country since the fall
of the Taliban, Mr. Karzai now finds himself not so favored at all.
Not by Washington, and not by his own.

In the White House, President Obama said he regarded Mr. Karzai as
unreliable and ineffective. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton
said he presided over a "narco-state." The Americans making Afghan
policy, worried that the war is being lost, are vowing to bypass Mr.
Karzai and deal directly with the governors in the countryside.

At home, Mr. Karzai faces a widening insurgency and a population that
blames him for the manifest lack of economic progress and the corrupt
officials that seem to stand at every doorway of his government. His
face, which once adorned the walls of tea shops across the country, is
today much less visible.

Now, perhaps crucially, an election looms. Mr. Karzai says he will ask
the voters to return him to the palace for another five-year term. The
election is set for Aug. 20, after what promises to be a violent and
eventful summer. In a poll commissioned by a group of private Afghans,
85 percent of those surveyed said they intended to vote for someone
other than Mr. Karzai.

Meanwhile, the Obama administration will have to decide what it wants
from Mr. Karzai as it tries to make good on its promise to reverse the
course of the war. Or whether it wants him at all.

With the insurgency rising, corruption soaring and opium blooming
across the land, it perhaps is not surprising that so many Afghans,
and so many in Washington, see President Karzai's removal as a
precondition for reversing the country's downward surge.

"Under President Karzai, we have gone from a better situation to a
good situation to a not-so-bad situation to a bad situation — and now
are going to worse," said Abdullah, a former foreign minister in Mr.
Karzai's government who may now challenge him for the presidency (and
who, like many Afghans, has only one name). "That is the trend.

"So let us say Karzai stays in power through the summer and that
nothing serious happens and then he wins re-election," Dr. Abdullah
said. "Then there will be two scenarios, and only two scenarios — a
rapid collapse or a slow unraveling."

People close to Mr. Karzai say the man is exhausted, wary of his
enemies and worried for his physical safety. He feels embattled and
underappreciated, they say, but is utterly determined, in spite of it
all, to run again and win. In recent weeks, the growing American
dissatisfaction with Mr. Karzai, coupled with a simmering frustration
among Afghans over what they regard as the reckless killing of
civilians by American forces, has prompted extraordinary reactions
from Mr. Karzai.

At a news conference on Tuesday at his marble-floored palace, Mr.
Karzai appeared side-by-side with Ban Ki-moon, the United Nations
secretary general. Mr. Karzai wore his signature outfit of fez and
cape, but his visage was wan and slack. Asked by an Afghan reporter
about his relations with American leaders, Mr. Karzai sprang to life,
accusing unnamed people in the American government of trying to
"pressure" him to stay silent over the deaths of Afghan civilians in
attacks by Americans.

"Our demands are clear — to stop the civilian casualties, the
searching of Afghan homes and the arresting Afghans," Mr. Karzai said
of the Americans. "And of course, the Americans pressured us to be
quiet and to make us retreat from our demands. But that is impossible.
Afghanistan and its president are not going to retreat from their
demands."

Mr. Karzai did not touch on larger frustrations, which Afghan and
Western officials here say he harbors, about the overall American
effort, namely, the relegation of Afghanistan to second-tier status
after the invasion of Iraq. Many Afghans and Western officials here
believe that it was the Iraq war, more than any other factor, that
deprived Mr. Karzai of the resources he needed to help the Afghan
state stand on its own, and to prevent the resurgence of the Taliban
that Mr. Obama is now vowing to contain.

Yet for all the doubts about Mr. Karzai — and for all the strains he
labors under — he remains by far the strongest politician in the
country. He commands the resources of the Afghan state, including the
army and the police, and billions of dollars in American and other aid
that flows into the treasury.

In his seven years in office, Mr. Karzai has successfully presided
over the transition of the Afghan state from the devastated,
pre-modern institution it was under the Taliban to the deeply troubled
but largely democratic one it is today. Perhaps most important for his
future, Mr. Karzai has assembled a team of senior administrators whose
competence and experience would be difficult for any challenger to
match.

Perhaps for that reason, of the many prominent Afghans who have hinted
that they may run against him, including Dr. Abdullah and a former
finance minister, Ashraf Ghani, only a handful of Afghans have so far
declared their intentions. Some Afghan leaders say they will announce
their candidacies soon, but it seems just as likely that they are
waiting to see if Mr. Karzai stumbles.

As for the members of Mr. Obama's team, they may yet discover that Mr.
Karzai is the man they will be forced to deal with, whether they like
him or not.

At the palace news conference, Mr. Karzai acknowledged his own
unpopularity, and then offered a vigorous defense of his record. He
declined to be interviewed for this article.

"Well, I have been in government for seven years. It's natural that I
would not be as popular now as I was seven years ago," Mr. Karzai
said.

"The institutions of Afghanistan have worked very well," he added.
"The Afghan people participated in the election for president. They
participated in elections for Parliament. The parliamentary system has
been functioning a lot better than some established parliaments in the
world. They have been making laws, approving laws. The government
institutions are increasingly in progress — the economy, the national
army, the growth of education. We went from almost two or three
universities in 2002 to 17 universities, to the freedom of the press,
hundreds of newspapers and radios and all that. I and the Afghan
people are proud of our achievements."

And, he might also have said, six million Afghan children attending
school, a quarter of whom are girls, whose education was prohibited by
the Taliban.

One of the people with the most generous words for Mr. Karzai is
William Wood, the American ambassador. Under the ambassador's former
boss, President Bush, Mr. Karzai enjoyed a favored personal status,
even if his state did not. That special relationship was symbolized by
the videoconferences in which the two men participated regularly.

"The guy works very hard," Mr. Wood said of Mr. Karzai. "He faces a
problem set every day that would daunt anyone. He's got an insurgency
based outside the country, and a level of poverty and criminality
inside the country that feeds the insurgency. He's got an army that
had to be built from zero following the ouster of the Taliban. He's
got a police force that had to be reformed.

Speaking in an interview at his office in Kabul, Mr. Wood added:
"Yeah, I think he's tired. And I think frankly that everyone — the
international community, the United States, the United Nations,
Western Europe, the international press — were unrealistically
optimistic about the problem of Afghanistan following the ouster of
the Taliban."

Mr. Wood will soon be replaced by Lt. Gen. Karl W. Eikenberry, a
former commander of American forces here.

In his last tour, which ended in 2007, General Eikenberry enjoyed good
relations with Mr. Karzai. Given Mr. Karzai's mood these days, that is
probably a good thing.

At a ceremony last month for the first graduates of Afghanistan's
National Military Academy, Mr. Karzai stood and addressed the
assembled 84 cadets as well as a group of diplomats, including Mr.
Wood. Mr. Karzai turned the occasion into a populist barnburner.

"I told America and the world to give us aircraft — otherwise we will
get them from the other place!" Mr. Karzai roared, prompting applause.
"I told them to give us the planes soon, that we have no more
patience, and that we cannot get along without military aircraft!

"Give us the aircraft sooner or we will get them from the others!" Mr.
Karzai roared again. "We told them to bring us tanks, too — otherwise
we will get them from other place!"

Mr. Karzai never said what the "other place" was.

Abdul Waheed Wafa contributed reporting from Kabul, and Peter Baker
from Washington.