Afghanistans uncertain future-Playing with fire

Hamid Karzais vilification of America is risking his countrys security

The Economist
1 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 jirga overwhelmingly 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.)
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 the Americans would not
accept 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 the New York Times questioned 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.
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 American
troops 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 than the 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
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.
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