Afghanistan needs a strong government, one that will prevent groups such as al-Qaeda using the country as a base from which to plan and launch terrorist attacks and preferably one that is prepared to slowly and gradually liberalise the country.
Few would disagree with that. Yet the reality is that the West, particularly Britain and the USA have repeatedly undermined the standing of President Kazai in the eyes of his own people. This week’s London conference on Afghanistan organised by Gordon Brown is just one such example of this.
Yet Hamid Karzai is a unique man on the Afghan political scene. Head of the important popalzai clan of the Pushtuns from which the Afghan royal family traditionally came, he is also Cambridge educated. He bridges the huge gap not merely between the Pushtun tribes and the Farsi speakers of the North and West of Afghanistan, but is also a man who understands the Western world. Even more significantly, in 2001 he was almost unique among Afghan political leaders in not having blood on his hands. Whilst other mujahaddin leaders had overseen atrocities committed against rival groups during the Soviet occupation, Karzai had been in the West mounting a diplomatic mission to bolster support for the Afghan resistance.
Yet President Karzai has been undermined by both the British and US governments:
1. The withdrawal of necessary military and intelligence support far too soon after the Taliban were ‘ousted’ from Kabul in 2001. This was due to the false assumption by the US and UK governments that the Taliban were ‘finished’, when in reality they were regrouping and re-establishing their hold on significant parts of rural Afghanistan. As a result huge amounts of western military and intelligence resources planned for Afghanistan were hurriedly ‘reallocated’ to Iraq following its occupation in 2003. These included 75% of all the predator drones that were so important in the fight against the Taliban, and the CIA's postponement of an $80 million plan to set up a new Afghanistan intelligence service. The British government was no less at fault with Defence Secretary John Reid publicly stating that he hoped the British troops he was sending to Helmand in 2006 would leave the country ‘without a single shot being fired’. So, the most immediate answer to the question Tony Blair this week posed to the Iraq Inquiry, about what the world would be like today if we hadn’t invaded Iraq – is that Afghanistan might now be a safer place.
2. President Karzai’s authority among his own people is seriously undermined by the fact that ordinary Afghans do not perceive him to be in control of western military activity happening in his own country. This situation has been exacerbated by what is seen by some as an over reliance on air strikes against the Taliban in order to minimise coalition casualties on the ground. However, whatever the truth of this, the reality is that every time a coalition air strike mistakenly targets civilians President Karzai has to face some very uncomfortable questions from yet another tribal delegation as to why this is happening, further diminishing his authority.
3. The campaign against the ‘corruption’ of the Karzai government. The fever pitch this reached during last year’s presidential election massively undermined the authority of the Afghan president amongst his own people in a country where honour is the most devastating thing possible to lose. The reality is that Afghanistan has always had huge problems with corruption. When Afghan judges and senior civil servants drive taxis on their day off because their salary is only $50 a month – not enough for a week’s rent - then of course there will be corruption. The truth is that virtually every country in that region has huge problems with corruption, while electoral fraud is a similarly widespread problem across the region. Yet the castigating of President Karzai for corruption and electoral fraud, not merely by the western press, but also with demands from President Obama and Gordon Brown for second round elections, showed very clearly to ordinary afghan people that they had a president who was not fully in control of his own country.
4. This, to Afghan eyes, humiliating spectacle of their own president being forced to be subservient to the US and the British governments continued this week with the London conference on Afghanistan 'organised by Gordon Brown'. The latter phrase says it all, it should have been President Karzai organising it, after all it's his country, but it is doubtful if leaders such Gordon Brown would have turned up to such a summit. At this summit, billed by some international officials as the ‘save Gordon Brown show’, President Karzai made the case for Afghanistan needing foreign help for at least 15 more years. Meanwhile Gordon Brown simultaneously tried to get his pre election message across that at least 5 Afghan provinces ‘would’ be handed over to Afghan control this year, a target NATO commanders consider to be 'very demanding', but which Mr Brown believes will be helped by a revamped programme attempting to bribe the Taliban to defect. The latter, incidentally is likely to be dangerous and ineffective for the reasons I outlined when the original programme was proposed last year.
Somehow western leaders just do not seem to get it. They do not get it that until Afghanistan is seen by its own people to have a president who is king in his own house, who is not seen to be subservient to the USA and the UK, until then it will always be unstable and prone to Taliban resurgence and potentially at least a haven for terrorism.
Afghanistan will need western support, including military support for a significant period of time, but that support must be much more backroom and discrete. Afghan leadership should never be undermined in the way it has been this week in order to create favourable pre election press releases in the UK.
