The Problem of Hamid Karzai and Our Mission in Afghanistan
The Afghan President has served as an important symbolic figure and partner in the Afghanistan war, but his continued ridicule of coalition forces may further erode US support for the mission and people Karzai purports to serve.
In a speech this past weekend to the Afghanistan Youth International Conference, President Hamid Karzai criticized US and coalition forces in Afghanistan, alleging a laundry list of damages inflicted upon his state and frustrating—again—leaders in Washington.
Karzai accused foreign troops of occupying Afghanistan “for their own purposes, their own goals.” He blamed coalition forces for pollution in Kabul, deteriorating road conditions (many of which have actually been repaired with NATO funds), and environmental damage due to chemicals present in bombs and weapons used there. He also implied that Western leaders assume the Afghans are uneducated and ignorant, concluding that he would address these issues with coalition leaders.
US Ambassador to Afghanistan Karl Eikenberry fired back in uncharacteristically candid remarks delivered on Sunday, reaffirming shared goals for a thriving and peaceful Afghanistan. He challenged Karzai’s comparison of coalition forces to enemy occupiers, warning that such public criticism causes US forces to “grow weary” of the war effort:
At the point your leaders believe that we are doing more harm than good, when we reach a point that we feel our soldiers and civilians are being asked to sacrifice without a just cause, and our generous aid programs dismissed as totally ineffective and the source of all corruption . . . especially at a time our economy is suffering and our needs are not being met, the American people will ask for our forces to come home.
This was not the first verbal attack on coalition troop presence by Karzai, but rather an unfortunately regular occurrence characteristic of the US relationship with the Afghan leader. Eikenberry’s response rings true for many.
Problems unique to Karzai’s personality complicate the relationship further. State Department cables leaked in 2009 quoted Eikenberry saying that Karzai possesses “a deep-seated insecurity” and that he is “not a reliable partner” for the US. The ambassador also wrote that Karzai is “a paranoid and weak individual unfamiliar with the basics of nation-building and overly self-conscious.” Furthermore, last year suggestions arose that Karzai is mentally unstable due to possible substance abuse problems.
Karzai’s inflammatory marks and erratic nature are a familiar problem. But his accusations that US forces are present simply out of self-interest are neither absurd nor necessarily as insulting as Eikenberry suggests. President Obama himself has stated publicly on various occasions that US national security is the primary consideration in formulating policy for Afghanistan. In September 2009, on NBC’s Meet the Press, President Obama explained:
The questions that I’m asking right now to our military…[are] how does this advance America’s national security interests, how does it make sure that al Qaeda and its extremist allies cannot attack the United States homeland, our allies, our troops who are based in Europe?…
And if supporting the Afghan national government and building capacity for their army and securing certain provinces advances that strategy, then we’ll move forward. But if it doesn’t, then I’m not interested in just being in Afghanistan for the sake of being in Afghanistan.
The divergence between President Obama’s statement above and Eikenberry’s defense of our investment in the Afghan people highlights the multidimensional nature of the conflict and the challenge of justifying the war in a manner satisfying to both Afghans and Americans.
Karzai traditionally takes a harsh tone toward coalition forces when addressing domestic Afghan audiences, as he did this weekend, making plain the challenge of juggling a diverse and skeptical Afghan people who are long weary of foreign troop presence. But when Karzai positions himself as the nationalist protector—which he frequently does—he is in effect erecting obstacles to the stated counterinsurgency goal of improving relations between coalition forces and Afghans.
The question that emerges, then, is what role Karzai actually plays in the formulation and advancement of US policy in Afghanistan.
The ISAF strategy emphasizing dependable governance at a local level could (if successful) decrease Karzai’s prominence and influence on Afghan public opinion. If Karzai continues to vocally disparage US forces and their mission in Afghanistan, it will erode even further American public support for the war.
With that in mind, Karzai should tread carefully: if a conflict of interest between the Afghan government (represented by Karzai) and US policy is increasingly apparent—especially to the American public—the US may respond to a vacuum of trust by cutting financial assistance for the Afghan government and expediting the troop drawdown. President Obama’s announcement of plans to withdraw troops, to be delivered tonight, will be the first indicator of the next direction our relations with Afghanistan will take.
