Team Infidel
Forum Spin Doctor
Los Angeles Times
November 12, 2006
Pg. 1
Afghanistan's Karzai faces disaffection in a nation hungry for progress. Many see him as a shadow of a president, and they fear a slide back to the Taliban.
By Paul Watson, Times Staff Writer
TRIBAL elders pleaded with Hamid Karzai to intervene in a land feud with their neighbors. But it was too dangerous for the president of Afghanistan to travel south to the heart of the Taliban insurgency, so Karzai invited them up to Kabul for lunch.
At least 120 men arrived, making their way past razor wire strung out a mile from the palace doors. After being repeatedly frisked and scanned, they finally passed through the palace gates.
The desert dust still clung to their plastic sandals and tattered clothes as they sat down under vaulted ceilings and crystal chandeliers. Waiters in black uniforms served up platters of roast chicken legs and heaping plates of pulau rice with raisins, almonds and pistachios.
The elders of the Tokhi and Hotak tribes, ethnic Pashtuns from Zabol province, ate their meal off fine china and washed it down with tumblers of doogh, a salty yogurt drink sprinkled with chopped mint.
Karzai, 48, himself the son of a Pashtun chief, assured them that he would try to find a solution to their 40-year-old argument with the Nasir tribe.
"My father spent all of his life solving tribal problems, and I was with him the whole time," he said. The elders muttered skeptically.
Most presidents don't concern themselves with tribal disputes, but Karzai, like Afghan kings of old, makes local quarrels part of his daily routine.
Five years after the fall of Kabul, aides say he is turning to tradition as he struggles to build a stable democracy on a foundation of war, corruption, foreign interference and religious extremism. Critics counter that he is retreating behind the walls of his 19th century palace and losing touch with a country sinking deeper into trouble.
But Karzai's foreign backers have left him with little real power, and his weak, corruption-riddled government lacks direct control over billions of dollars in development aid, money meant to help Karzai win Afghan support for his administration.
After the United States joined forces with Afghanistan's Northern Alliance militia to oust the Taliban regime, it pledged to help rebuild the country and chose Karzai to lead the effort. Since then, foreign donors have spent at least $16 billion in Afghanistan; more than $10.3 billion of that has come from the United States.
Afghanistan has made enormous progress in some areas. With hopes for a better future soaring, its citizens defied insurgent threats to elect Karzai to a full term two years ago and to choose a parliament last year. The elections were the freest and fairest in the country's history.
Under Karzai, more than 90% of Afghan children are in school, compared with fewer than 20% during Taliban rule. A multinational effort is training an army that is halfway to its goal of 70,000 soldiers in uniform, as it strives to overcome ethnic divisions, equipment problems and low morale. Parliament is gradually asserting its authority. A full quarter of the members are women.
But the progress has not met the rising expectations of Karzai's countrymen. Many see the nation slipping back into the grip of violence, corruption and extremism from which the West promised to liberate them.
On paper, the post-Taliban constitution gives Afghanistan's president ample power. But parliament wrangled with Karzai for months over his Cabinet picks and rejected his nominee to head the Supreme Court.
He has had better success shuffling provincial governors, but several are still regarded as corrupt and ineffective. Central government influence remains weak in large parts of the country.
Perhaps Karzai's greatest strength is giving pep talks to Afghans at news conferences and in speeches, urging them to unite and solve their problems. Still, many say they would prefer honest justice, jobs and peace to fine words.
From ethnic minorities in the north to his fellow Pashtuns in the south, Karzai faces the same growing disaffection.
Sitting on a curb in the northern city of Mazar-i-Sharif, Sanam Shah spoke of the Karzai era's mixed blessings. A mother of eight and an ethnic Uzbek, she suffers kidney and digestive problems and traveled from her desert village of Andkhoi to find a good doctor.
Foreign aid has delivered new equipment to her local clinic, but none of the employees are properly trained to use it, she said, speaking through the mesh of her white burka veil. "I think Karzai is doing a fine job, but nothing has changed in my life," she said.
Hundreds of miles to the south in Lowgar, the owner of a two-pump gas station, a Pashtun, said he was unemployed under the Taliban but was able start his own business when U.S. aid rebuilt the highway.
But the Taliban are back, scaring off customers by ambushing cars at night, said Hekmatullah, who, like many Afghans, uses one name.
"Power is back in the hands of those who had it before, like warlords, the Taliban and thieves," he said. "Nobody pays attention to poor people like us."
In the eyes of Afghans, the restrictions on Karzai's authority imposed by foreign governments make him a shadow of a president with only the trappings of power: photo opportunities, ribbon cuttings, bodyguards with wraparound sunglasses who carry M-4 assault rifles and whisper into microphones in the sleeves of their dark suits.
Although Karzai is officially commander in chief, he has no control over the foreign troops fighting the Taliban insurgency and little over his own army, which answers to the United States and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. His defense minister's main job is cajoling donors into providing the army with better equipment.
Karzai repeatedly has demanded changes in tactics, but each time foreign troops accidentally kill Afghan civilians, he loses credibility with his people.
In the meantime, the insurgency has spread across more than half the country, with fighters advancing northward from strongholds in the east and pushing all the way to the Iranian border in the west. Government officials say the militants in villages and districts near Kabul, the capital, are laying the groundwork for future offensives.
Former mujahedin retain ties to their old commanders, and many are ready to fight again if democracy falters.
Corruption in the courts and police has made many Afghans nostalgic for the Taliban's ruthless justice. The threat of violence has forced hundreds of schools to close and left others without enough books or teachers.
The country's gross domestic product has doubled since Karzai came to office, but the drug trade is the largest employer and source of income. Drugs account for half of Afghanistan's economy and create what the United Nations calls a "narco society."
Despite hundreds of millions of dollars in foreign aid aimed at persuading farmers to grow legal crops, this year's opium harvest is expected to set a record. It's up 50% from last year, to an estimated 6,700 tons, the U.N. said in early September.
Though reconstruction spending could help the government draw support away from drug lords, the Taliban and other foes, only a quarter of public spending goes through the Afghan government, World Bank figures show.
U.S. money supports a wide variety of projects to improve agriculture and government institutions, support schools and clinics, and rebuild roads, bridges, canals and other infrastructure destroyed by war. But unlike Britain and a few other countries, the United States has not demonstrated confidence in Karzai's government by giving it direct control of the funds.
William Byrd, senior economic advisor at the World Bank office in Kabul, said more of the money should be channeled through the government, allowing Afghans to learn to handle it and showing respect for the country's sovereignty.
"The only way to get these government systems going is to start working with them, and in them, rather than on parallel tracks outside," he said.
Aid groups and their contractors are also guilty of corruption, but they aren't accountable to Afghan voters, said Jawed Ludin, Karzai's chief of staff.
"Democracy is about the empowerment of people," Ludin said in an interview. "To make democracy in Afghanistan real, we should give the Afghan people the sense that they can control things, that they can implement their own decisions."
November 12, 2006
Pg. 1
Afghanistan's Karzai faces disaffection in a nation hungry for progress. Many see him as a shadow of a president, and they fear a slide back to the Taliban.
By Paul Watson, Times Staff Writer
TRIBAL elders pleaded with Hamid Karzai to intervene in a land feud with their neighbors. But it was too dangerous for the president of Afghanistan to travel south to the heart of the Taliban insurgency, so Karzai invited them up to Kabul for lunch.
At least 120 men arrived, making their way past razor wire strung out a mile from the palace doors. After being repeatedly frisked and scanned, they finally passed through the palace gates.
The desert dust still clung to their plastic sandals and tattered clothes as they sat down under vaulted ceilings and crystal chandeliers. Waiters in black uniforms served up platters of roast chicken legs and heaping plates of pulau rice with raisins, almonds and pistachios.
The elders of the Tokhi and Hotak tribes, ethnic Pashtuns from Zabol province, ate their meal off fine china and washed it down with tumblers of doogh, a salty yogurt drink sprinkled with chopped mint.
Karzai, 48, himself the son of a Pashtun chief, assured them that he would try to find a solution to their 40-year-old argument with the Nasir tribe.
"My father spent all of his life solving tribal problems, and I was with him the whole time," he said. The elders muttered skeptically.
Most presidents don't concern themselves with tribal disputes, but Karzai, like Afghan kings of old, makes local quarrels part of his daily routine.
Five years after the fall of Kabul, aides say he is turning to tradition as he struggles to build a stable democracy on a foundation of war, corruption, foreign interference and religious extremism. Critics counter that he is retreating behind the walls of his 19th century palace and losing touch with a country sinking deeper into trouble.
But Karzai's foreign backers have left him with little real power, and his weak, corruption-riddled government lacks direct control over billions of dollars in development aid, money meant to help Karzai win Afghan support for his administration.
After the United States joined forces with Afghanistan's Northern Alliance militia to oust the Taliban regime, it pledged to help rebuild the country and chose Karzai to lead the effort. Since then, foreign donors have spent at least $16 billion in Afghanistan; more than $10.3 billion of that has come from the United States.
Afghanistan has made enormous progress in some areas. With hopes for a better future soaring, its citizens defied insurgent threats to elect Karzai to a full term two years ago and to choose a parliament last year. The elections were the freest and fairest in the country's history.
Under Karzai, more than 90% of Afghan children are in school, compared with fewer than 20% during Taliban rule. A multinational effort is training an army that is halfway to its goal of 70,000 soldiers in uniform, as it strives to overcome ethnic divisions, equipment problems and low morale. Parliament is gradually asserting its authority. A full quarter of the members are women.
But the progress has not met the rising expectations of Karzai's countrymen. Many see the nation slipping back into the grip of violence, corruption and extremism from which the West promised to liberate them.
On paper, the post-Taliban constitution gives Afghanistan's president ample power. But parliament wrangled with Karzai for months over his Cabinet picks and rejected his nominee to head the Supreme Court.
He has had better success shuffling provincial governors, but several are still regarded as corrupt and ineffective. Central government influence remains weak in large parts of the country.
Perhaps Karzai's greatest strength is giving pep talks to Afghans at news conferences and in speeches, urging them to unite and solve their problems. Still, many say they would prefer honest justice, jobs and peace to fine words.
From ethnic minorities in the north to his fellow Pashtuns in the south, Karzai faces the same growing disaffection.
Sitting on a curb in the northern city of Mazar-i-Sharif, Sanam Shah spoke of the Karzai era's mixed blessings. A mother of eight and an ethnic Uzbek, she suffers kidney and digestive problems and traveled from her desert village of Andkhoi to find a good doctor.
Foreign aid has delivered new equipment to her local clinic, but none of the employees are properly trained to use it, she said, speaking through the mesh of her white burka veil. "I think Karzai is doing a fine job, but nothing has changed in my life," she said.
Hundreds of miles to the south in Lowgar, the owner of a two-pump gas station, a Pashtun, said he was unemployed under the Taliban but was able start his own business when U.S. aid rebuilt the highway.
But the Taliban are back, scaring off customers by ambushing cars at night, said Hekmatullah, who, like many Afghans, uses one name.
"Power is back in the hands of those who had it before, like warlords, the Taliban and thieves," he said. "Nobody pays attention to poor people like us."
In the eyes of Afghans, the restrictions on Karzai's authority imposed by foreign governments make him a shadow of a president with only the trappings of power: photo opportunities, ribbon cuttings, bodyguards with wraparound sunglasses who carry M-4 assault rifles and whisper into microphones in the sleeves of their dark suits.
Although Karzai is officially commander in chief, he has no control over the foreign troops fighting the Taliban insurgency and little over his own army, which answers to the United States and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. His defense minister's main job is cajoling donors into providing the army with better equipment.
Karzai repeatedly has demanded changes in tactics, but each time foreign troops accidentally kill Afghan civilians, he loses credibility with his people.
In the meantime, the insurgency has spread across more than half the country, with fighters advancing northward from strongholds in the east and pushing all the way to the Iranian border in the west. Government officials say the militants in villages and districts near Kabul, the capital, are laying the groundwork for future offensives.
Former mujahedin retain ties to their old commanders, and many are ready to fight again if democracy falters.
Corruption in the courts and police has made many Afghans nostalgic for the Taliban's ruthless justice. The threat of violence has forced hundreds of schools to close and left others without enough books or teachers.
The country's gross domestic product has doubled since Karzai came to office, but the drug trade is the largest employer and source of income. Drugs account for half of Afghanistan's economy and create what the United Nations calls a "narco society."
Despite hundreds of millions of dollars in foreign aid aimed at persuading farmers to grow legal crops, this year's opium harvest is expected to set a record. It's up 50% from last year, to an estimated 6,700 tons, the U.N. said in early September.
Though reconstruction spending could help the government draw support away from drug lords, the Taliban and other foes, only a quarter of public spending goes through the Afghan government, World Bank figures show.
U.S. money supports a wide variety of projects to improve agriculture and government institutions, support schools and clinics, and rebuild roads, bridges, canals and other infrastructure destroyed by war. But unlike Britain and a few other countries, the United States has not demonstrated confidence in Karzai's government by giving it direct control of the funds.
William Byrd, senior economic advisor at the World Bank office in Kabul, said more of the money should be channeled through the government, allowing Afghans to learn to handle it and showing respect for the country's sovereignty.
"The only way to get these government systems going is to start working with them, and in them, rather than on parallel tracks outside," he said.
Aid groups and their contractors are also guilty of corruption, but they aren't accountable to Afghan voters, said Jawed Ludin, Karzai's chief of staff.
"Democracy is about the empowerment of people," Ludin said in an interview. "To make democracy in Afghanistan real, we should give the Afghan people the sense that they can control things, that they can implement their own decisions."