O Brother, Where Art Thou?

The Obama administration needs to make up its mind: Is Ahmed Wali Karzai a menace or an asset?

MAY 19, 2010

During his visit to Washington last week, Afghanistan's President Hamid Karzai allowed that he and U.S. President Barack Obama had discussed the problem posed by his notorious half-brother, Ahmad Wali Karzai, and that the issue had been "resolved." This last part is highly unlikely, unless President Karzai meant something like "we agreed to disagree." The "AWK problem," as it is known in Kabul and Kandahar, not only isn't resolved between Washington and Kabul; it isn't even resolved inside the Obama administration.

AWK is widely believed to be paying off the Taliban, skimming money from drug dealers, stealing government land, running private militias, threatening and even murdering his critics. He is a warlord's warlord. But he is also, and perhaps even more ruinously, using his position as head of Kandahar's provincial council to undermine tentative efforts at good governance emanating from Kabul. In late March, to take only one small example, Kandahar held a local jirga to nominate delegates to the national "peace jirga" President Karzai is holding on May 29 in the hopes of promoting reconciliation with the Taliban. The Ministry of Borders and Tribal Affairs had sent a broad-based list of elders who should be invited to the event. Mysteriously, a new and much-shrunken list appeared 48 hours before the meeting. "We asked around," a senior civilian official in Kandahar told me on my trip there last month, "and found out that it was AWK who made the change." He added, "Jirgas normally go on for days while they reach consensus on an issue. This one consisted of eight set speeches, and then they went to lunch."

The underlying message of the fake jirga, like the underlying message of last year's national election -- which AWK, among many other allies of President Karzai, brazenly rigged -- is that the formal operations of government are a sham, and thus that real power is private and unchecked. The central goal of the counterinsurgency strategy President Obama has adopted last year is to use a combination of military force and civilian assistance to help foster a government sufficiently just and effective that the Afghan people will prefer it to the Taliban. AWK makes a mockery of that goal, which is why a parade of leading figures, including U.S. Amb. Karl Eikenberry, have implored the Afghan leader to rein his brother in -- only to fall back before the president's impossible demand that they furnish documentary proof of misdeeds.

Intriguingly, and encouragingly, the most serious challenge to AWK's power may have come from Afghan authorities: An investigation ordered by Gen. Sher Mohammed Zazai, the army corps commander in Kandahar, recently concluded that Karzai and his allies were engaging in illegal construction on more than 1,000 acres of government land; AWK retaliated by shutting down the provincial council. President Karzai can dismiss American demands to deal with his brother as arrogant meddling; discrediting allegations by his own senior army officers may prove a tougher sell.

BANARAS KHAN/AFP/Getty Images

 

James Traub is a contributing writer for the New York Times Magazine and author of, most recently, The Freedom Agenda. His column for ForeignPolicy.com runs weekly.

BOREDWELL

9:01 PM ET

May 19, 2010

Banzai Karzai

Whether it be dictator, king , president or warlord, Afghanistan conforms to that form of governance which characterizes the region - patriarchal autocracy in which nepotism is rule of thumb. It appears the real problem here is neither the protective brother-president nor for that matter self-aggrandizing AWK but our wishes, hopes, expectations and demands that the Karzai bros play OUR game rather than theirs own. Why we think a country mired in 25 years of years of war, held hostage by warlords, terrorized by the Taliban and twice invaded would suddenly turn into a democracy to appease us is imperial thinking. Our culture, customs, philosophy and ideals are diametrically opposite to those of fractured Afghanistan, the hearts of the people and their fervent faith. We should look to ourselves and understand that our self-interests are as offensive to obdurate Karzai et frere as we perceive their petulant noncooperation to be toward us. Nationalism may never take hold in Afghanistan; democracy, perhaps, never. Let's face it: we've lost Afghanistan. Pointing fingers and assigning blame is history's task not ours. Afghanistan may remain a kakotopia forever.

 

DISIGNY

8:15 AM ET

May 20, 2010

the Non-Nation of Afghanistan

As long as we keep insisting that "Afghanistan" is a nation, we will continue to be disappointed. It is a Nation the Way the "Republic of South Vietnam" was a nation, only less so.

 

IAN

12:44 PM ET

May 20, 2010

No, he isn't the one to destroy Afghanistan

That would be Karzai and Obama, the two that continue to let him do the shit that he does. Karzai, because he undoubtedly skims off his brother's skmmings. Obama, because he no longer cares about the war, unless it means getting out of it in time for it to count toward the 2012 elections, but still be stable enough to suggest a "partial" win, or degerating into chaos and Taliban re-rule after the elections happen.

No matter how much people want to lay the blame on some stooge, you have to look at the leaders that are not fixing the problems... But, with leaders that high, when crap rolls downhill and said leaders are at the top of the hill, nothing hits them, so they're clean, I guess.

That's why we have this article about this potential scapegoat instead of the real problem.

 

FREDDIE SUMMERS

2:41 AM ET

June 18, 2010

Winning The Peace

Kandaharis have little faith in their government or NATO; neither has been able to provide a satisfying level of security or reign in corruption. Azizullah Yarmal, the deputy mayor of Kandahar city and a man considered by many to be "one of the few honest, effective and esteemed public officials," was gunned down by the Taliban in a mosque in April. nebraska auto insurance Yet at times even the Taliban appears preferable to Kandaharis, who blame the Islamist movement for violence and insecurity yet also see them as "incorruptible" and would rather see a reconciliation with the Taliban than a prolonging of the status quo. Karzai's strong-arm dominance of local affairs does not improve the government's image in Kandahari eyes. In a report released in April by the Institute for the Study of War, Carl Forsberg wrote that "Karzai's growing unpopularity risks boosting support for the Taliban and jeopardizing chances of convincing insurgents to switch sides," according to McClatchy. It's true that NATO has pressured Karzai and exhibited a muddled attitude toward the "King of Kandahar." In late March, the U.S. military suggested that Karzai could be put on a kill-or-capture list if smoking-gun evidence of his criminality ever came to light. baltimore car insurance Now, the West appears ready to work with him. Karzai has a right to be suspicious of NATO. But NATO has an equal right to view Karzai with wariness. It might be better to work with the man, but I don't think anyone should really expect him to pack up his influence and go home.