The New Karzai: Too little too late

As his predecessor Burhanuddin Rabani, the incumbent Hamid Karzai wants to stay in power; no matter how far he has failed his people. And similar to Barrack Obama, Mr. Karzai’s strategy for reelection is concentrated on “change”.

Over the past seven years Karzai has widely been criticized at home and outside for his weak leadership, ineptitude and inability to curb corruption and warlordism in his government.

Mr. Karzai has wasted a very long time and too many good opportunities to rid his country of another failure.

However, the desire to remain president in the coming five years has forced Karzai to embark a garish show of change. He wants to give out the message to Afghans and to foreigners that he has changed, and can be a darling again.

In an effort to appease fast growing domestic dissidence, president Karzai has reshuffled some cabinet posts, voiced disgust over civilian causalities and fired a minister over corruption charges. Karzai has also approved the execution of criminals sentenced to death by his notoriously corrupt judiciary.

To attract the support of Pashtuns – Afghanistan’s largest ethnic group – Hamid Karzai has invited the Taliban to reconciliation and power-sharing. He has even breached limits by offering amnesty and protection to Taliban’s leadership. The U.S. has put a bounty of US$10 million over the head of Mullah Omar whom Mr. Karzai has repeatedly invited for reconciliation.

With the departure of George W. Bush, Karzai finds himself vulnerable and lonely in a post-War-On-Terror world where “change” is top policy in the agenda.

Regardless of Mr. Karzai’s ambition for reelection, his attempts to show off “change” are too late and futile. Things have already gone out of Karzai’s control.

Mr. Karzai can succeed to keep the power, but he will not reverse Afghanistan’s failure under his leadership.

Outsourcing the America’s difficult war to Afghans

US Defence Secretary, Robert Gates, has asserted that the ongoing war in Afghanistan is not “America’s war”, but is “an Afghan war”.

"We would be making a terrible mistake if this ends up being called America's war,” Gates was quoted by the AFP on 1 November.

I think Gates’ assertion marks a watershed in the post-9/11 so called “War on Terror”. It also seems to me that the outgoing Bush Administration has decided to inherit its “War on Terror” to its Afghan ally, Mr. Karzai.

Mr. Gates might have forgotten the fact that the very post-Taliban Afghanistan has been a product of US adventurism, blunders and the cheap state-building.

Not only is the current war in Afghanistan a purely US manufacture, but the country has been a playground for US interventionism since 1978. The Taliban, the Mujahideen, the warlords, the narco-industry, the ineptitude Karzai and many other scourges in today’s Afghanistan are made-in-USA.

In 2002-2003 Afghanistan was widely labeled a “good war” which tempted the Europeans to step in. The easy-and-good war in Afghanistan also prompted George W. Bush to initiate the Iraq catastrophe.

Now as the war has become tough and the Europeans and Canadians have begun doubting the very rationale of their engagement, the Americans want to sell it to the Afghans. The Americans think they won the good war in 2002 and the current bad war, the bloodier one, is of Afghans.

Mr. Gates! The real war has just broke out in Afghanistan with over 10 million food-insecure population, thousands of civilian casualties, numerous warlords, endemic corruption, dozens of ineptitude puppets, skyrocketing organized crimes and millions of destitute and desperate people.

Does America have the guts to win this war?

It would be easy and cheap to scapegoat Afghans in this war, again as in 1980s.

It requires much more than the B52s, the Special Forces, the Guantanamo and the aerial strikes. It requires humanity, sympathy, responsibility, commitment, honesty and many other little things which the Pentagon may consider petty.