KABUL, Afghanistan – When Afghan President Hamid Karzai was meeting with provincial governors recently, he looked at his dinner and remarked, “Maybe the foreigners put some poison in my food.”
This story was told to me by someone who attended the event and said he thought Karzai was joking. But the Afghan leader’s remark shows how low U.S.-Afghan diplomatic relations have sunk as Karzai has repeatedly railed against foreigners and declared he won’t be anyone’s puppet.
Recently, Karzai has rushed to Iran and China to prove he doesn’t depend solely on Washington, and rebuffed U.S. demands that he curb corruption.
Yet before calls mount in Congress for us to quit Kabul, we should examine the dysfunctional way the Obama administration has dealt with the Karzai problem. It has made a bad situation worse.
Despite U.S. frustration with Karzai, he’s the elected president, and there’s no alternative out there. We have to deal with the Afghan leader we’ve got.
Yet the civilian side of the U.S. government can’t seem to figure out how to talk to the prickly Karzai. A large part of the problem lies with the unwieldy structure Secretary of State Hillary Clinton set up when she named a special representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan, Ambassador Richard Holbrooke.
Holbrooke, renowned for his abrasive personality, alienated Karzai from the get-go. He’s chastised Karzai in public and left the Afghan leader convinced the administration wants to oust him. In a culture that prizes respect, such public rebukes, even if deserved, ensure Karzai will lash back.
Holbrooke’s relationship with Karzai is so strained there is hardly any communication between them. What use is a special representative to Afghanistan who can’t talk with the leader in Kabul?
Karzai’s hostility toward Holbrooke has colored his relationship with the U.S. Embassy. Afghans are uncertain who speaks for President Barack Obama – Holbrooke or U.S. Ambassador Karl Eikenberry. Adding confusion, the CIA seems to have its own policy.
Obama hasn’t helped. Unlike then-President George W. Bush, who held monthly videoconferences with Karzai, Obama has distanced himself from the Afghan leader. He made his first visit to Kabul as president only two weeks ago, for a few hours in the middle of the night, to lecture Karzai on corruption. In a relationship in which trust has totally eroded, this fly-by-night meeting made matters worse.
The U.S. official with the best relationship with Karzai is Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the top U.S. and NATO commander in Afghanistan. U.S. military officials have taken a different approach to Karzai from civilians, making frequent contact and ostentatiously displaying respect. The U.S. commander takes Karzai’s displays of nationalism more in stride, in the hope he’ll start acting like a national leader.
The issue is not whether Karzai denounces foreigners, but whether he begins to take responsibility for ensuring stability in troubled areas such as Kandahar.
The administration should designate one point person to deal with Karzai – preferably a strengthened U.S. ambassador to Kabul who has Obama’s full backing. The Afghan leader needs to hear one clear message – in private.
The United States can’t afford an open war of words with Karzai. It is a war we can’t win, one that could destroy the central foreign-policy undertaking of Obama’s first term.