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At Large
No Kumbaya in Kabul
Not just McChrystal and the White House, but no one seems to be getting along in Afghanistan.
There appears to be one thing on which all parties can agree regarding Afghanistan. No one seems to be getting along with each other. Hamid Karzai took Barack Obama’s tongue lashing in March on the subject of graft in Kabul exactly as one would expect. The make-up trip to Washington was pure show. Karzai has barely concealed his contempt for a man he has confided to friends is a political novice.
Starting things off was the leaked Nov. ‘09 cable from Ambassador Karl Eikenberry saying, “President Karzai is not an adequate strategic partner.” Eikenberry and Karzai no longer talk. No one wonders why. The cable also trashed General Stanley McChrystal’s surge strategies, so presumably the American ambassador and the general also don’t talk very much anymore. After the exposure in print of McChrystal’s aides’ disparaging remarks concerning White House understanding of the political military issues in Afghanistan (and the apparent agreement of McChrystal himself regarding those remarks), the discipline of internal diplomacy appears non-existent.
Then there is the oft-repeated rumor that President Obama’s special representative to Afghanistan and Pakistan, Richard Holbrooke, also doesn’t have a friendly relationship with President Karzai. Of course there is nothing really new in that situation because there are many people with whom Holbrooke doesn’t get along. Being brilliant but overbearing has been the knock on this gentleman for many years.
There are many simplistic answers given when the question is asked as to why such conflict and turmoil seems to be standard operating procedure for this part of the world. Aside from the ever present dust, heat or cold of which most visitors complain, the explanation offered by White House and DoD insiders is the conveniently irrelevant, “Well, you know, Karzai’s brother is tied to the drug trade, makes millions of dollars from U.S. aid programs, has a private army, etc. And by the way, the Taliban are being paid off not to attack NATO supply convoys.” Hmm, that surely explains everything.
On top of all this the Afghan Minister of Interior and the head of the National Directorate of Security, aka the chief intelligence officer, have resigned as a result of the Taliban launching some rockets into President Karzai’s peace jirga. There is a consensus in Kabul’s press circles that no one in Afghanistan really believes that’s why they quit. But at least the explanation served its purpose and didn’t scare the horses, as Queen Victoria would have said.
Nobody was upset at the departure of the two excellent English-speakers other than the CIA and SIS (MI-6) chiefs of station, as well as perhaps their Russian counterpart. There’s an old Afghan saying that roughly translates into meaning you can’t tell the players without a scorecard. It’s quite applicable in this case.
Hanif Atmar, the former interior minister, started off in the late 1980s as a member of the KGB-trained Khad secret police, the mainstay of the Kabul government during the Soviet occupation. Unfortunately young Hanif lost one of his legs fighting the mujahedeen and fled to London with others of the waning communist era under President Najibullah. Atmar attended the University of York where he studied information technology and international economic development. Eventually this led him to the posts of minister of rural development and subsequently interior minister under his fellow Pashtun, Hamid Karzai. Here’s where the scorecard comes in.
Amrullah Saleh has been an old friend of the United States ever since he was deputy intelligence chief for the late great British/American paramilitary asset, Ahmed Shah Massoud, the Northern Alliance leader. Though an ethnic Tajik from the north, Saleh made the transition to the Karzai entourage in 2004 as head of Afghan intelligence joining his fellow northerner, Abdullah Abdullah, who was foreign minister.
Karzai and Abdullah always were competitive and the relationship disintegrated when Abdullah decided to challenge for the presidency. Obviously Saleh was tainted by his earlier relationship with Abdullah and the Northern Alliance’s close U.S. contact. Karzai wanted that special relationship to be strictly his alone. Pakistani intelligence (ISI) presumably are happy to see Saleh go as he had been actively campaigning against them at every turn regarding their aid to the Taliban.
Suitable for a man who had spent a good portion of the '90s managing a neighborhood restaurant in Chicago, Ahmed Wali Karzai, the president’s half-brother, apparently had worked out a “live and let live” arrangement with Hanif Atmar, so at worst he is of two minds with the passage of the former KGB-trained minister of interior. Not unexpectedly neither the Russian rezident in Kabul nor any of the numerous British Foreign Office reps who had close relations with the York alumnus have offered comment.
Musical political chairs is an old Afghan tradition. It provides work for all who are worthy and many who aren’t. The intrigue around the Karzai court apparently has infected the American and British side just as earlier Afghan politics played havoc with Russian efforts to secure the country to their end. Vietnam often has been mentioned in explaining Afghanistan; the number of casualties may be smaller, but unfortunately the endless intrigue and backbiting of Saigon seems to be well replicated in Kabul.
About the Author
George H. Wittman writes a weekly column on international affairs for The American Spectator online. He was the founding chairman of the National Institute for Public Policy.
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Melvin| 6.23.10 @ 6:26AM
The only ones who seem to have a plan and know what they are doing is the Taliban.
Alan Brooks| 6.23.10 @ 7:57PM
As Rush said, "we can only bomb Afghanistan UP to the stone age."
Gr0w1er| 6.24.10 @ 7:53PM
Yeah- the seventh century AD would be too ultra-modern for those guys.
Ret. Marine| 6.23.10 @ 6:56AM
Try to understand tribal affiliations and you understand what is happening here. This is nothing new for this region. The sad part is, it will never stop, it's ingrained to their core being. This is how business is done.
Ret. Marine| 6.24.10 @ 5:34AM
We did go in to do just as you suggested and seem not to understand, you might want to ask Rumsfeld why the particulars were not met. He, afterall, decided not to push the issue to it's fullest potential. Never loose the fact that it only took 6-weeks to formulate a winning team, we pushed them all the way to the Kush mountains, that's where we were told to back off.
Christopher Holland| 6.23.10 @ 9:50PM
In that case, this snake pit isn't worth the bones of a single American Marine. As LBJ once said, its time to pick up your hat and leave.
jack| 6.23.10 @ 7:44AM
Funny watching Democrats calling Karzai corrupt. Has Karzai looted any companies like Fannie. Has he listed thousand of dead voters? does he use union thugs to do his bidding.
the only reason we are in Afghanistan is because obama didnt want to look weak after saying this was the right war. It is not the right war and if he had any guts he would have pulled out of this mess months ago. Afghanistan unlike Iraq has no history of a national government,commerce or civilization for that matter. Get out now.
Louis Jenkins| 6.23.10 @ 8:26AM
So is McCrystal going to resign or not? He might as well do so, so the Pretender n Chief can get someone who is more to his liking. Someone he will communicate with. How can those men fight a war with one hand tied behind their back? We can blame tribal affiliations, that Afghanistan has no national history or government, or whatever. The bottom line is the Pretender n Chief inherited a war that he really had no intention of fighting. He hit the ground, looked around, and realized that he had to stay the course. Only he'd do it his way. Making war in a restrained manner.
John Lee Pettimore| 6.23.10 @ 9:23AM
Louis: The General has tendered his resignation. The question is whether BHO is going to accept it.
Louis Jenkins| 6.23.10 @ 10:58AM
I had heard yesterday that McCrystal had a letter composed and written, but had not presented it to the Pretender n Chief. That he was awaiting the meeting to resign, or not to resign, at the beck and call of the chief so to speak. Has he infact resigned now?
davelnaf| 6.23.10 @ 9:56AM
Having spent some time in Afghanistan, I can tell you with near certainty that trying to turn a country like Afghanistan into a real nation with the kind of human material at your disposal there is like putting a man on the moon without a rocket. I liked the majority of Afghans I came into contact with on BAF and some of the individuals that came there to work were bright and well-motivated. But most of them were not and all were quite backward.
At the risk of doing the armchair general thing I would like to make a suggestion. Given the items just mentioned it seems to make more sense to have ISAF pull back into its large bases and disrupt any attempt by Al Qaeda to reconstitute in the country. That, after all, is the reason why we went to Afghanistan in the first place.
Nation building is a non-starter in a country like Afghanistan where, if the people don’t quite measure up, the land certainly will not help you make a go of it—particularly its eastern half. Even if there is now potential mineral wealth for what is left of the Afghan elites to plunder little of it will ever make its way down to the average Afghan. This is the reality in that country and the people of Afghanistan have been so beat down by it any assumption that we can nation-build there makes us look naïve at the very least.
John II| 6.23.10 @ 10:00AM
Gen. McCrystal's friendly relations with a hostile rag like "Rolling Stone" bespeaks a political naivete that I find more charming than appalling. He really is a warrior, not a calculating time-server like the military folks now sucking up to Obama as they did to Clinton.
So on top of the rest of the impossible mess in Afghanistan, we now have the sickening spectacle of a worthy man who knows nothing of politics being dressed down by an unworthy clown who knows nothing else.
Robert Pinkerton| 6.23.10 @ 12:40PM
If I correctly understand this, the United States originally went into Afghanistan in pursuit of Usama binLadin. What I never could understand, except on terms of grave disadvantage to us, is why we went galumphing in in large overt, noisy force. Why, instead, did we not rather send a clandestine team into Afghanistan, tasked with either bringing out Mr. binLadin or bringing out his severed head. When I spoke my misgivings to inactive military friends, I was told that this country simply lacked the appropriate human resources to assemble such a team (Query to fellow commenters: Is this accurate?), and the capacity to keep secret the existence of such a team if it were assembled (Same query). Further, a Marine Vietnam veteran told me my suggestion ran counter to an invincible bias to the effect that 'If it ain't of Brown & Root dimensions, it's only fit for pissants.'
So why use a .50"BMG for a job better suited to a .22" Short? If the task is only platoon-size, why use an entire regiment simply because one is available? I acknowledge that this I do not understand.
JimH| 6.23.10 @ 1:18PM
We have to decide if we stay a republic or become an empire. If empire we better get a lot better at it then we have shown so far. As bloody minded as the Soviets were, they could not make it work in Afghanistan. No one else has succeeded there either. Following 9/11 when we went in and took out the leadership because they harbored our enemies was the correct response. We should have left it there with the warning that if we had to return we would make the first visit look like a picnic.
JP| 6.23.10 @ 1:42PM
As of 13:35 it appears that CENTCOM CINC General Petreous will assume command of the Afghan Theatre of Operations (the AP reported this around noon).
Petreous is about to receive the biggest crap sandwich since Abrams took over from Westmorland in Vietnam. Obama obviously hasn't a clue in how to build a foreign policy - military team. With ret General Eckenberry remaining as ambassador, Petreous had better watch his back. To make matters worse, he will be set up to take the fall when Afghanistan is lost.
George True| 6.23.10 @ 6:19PM
I would not be surprised if McCrystal is secretly breathing a sigh of relief. The Obama administration is determined to follow the path of half-measures in Afghanistan, which always has and always will result in failure. McCrystal has now extricated himself from a no-win situation for him.
If we continue engaging in such absurdities like forcing risiculous rules of engagment on our troops, paying the Taliban not to attack our convoys, trying to seek out the "good" Taliban to make a political solution with them, and emphasizing a date by which we will withdraw, then it it will not be a matter of if we fail in Afghanistan, but merely when.
C Le May| 6.23.10 @ 6:58PM
Any soldier that puts his life on the line for this purple-lipped poser is a fool and a chump. All US forces in Afghanistan should throw down their arms and refuse to fight. This insidious parasite Obama MUST be neutered!
John II| 6.23.10 @ 9:14PM
So now our fraudster-in-chief has taken a cheap and short-lived political advantage of one soldier's naivete.
What does Petraeus have in mind, serving this piece of slimy Chicago detritus? I guess we're going to find out, aren't we?