Afghanistan Analysis: Petraeus Hits Back at Karzai

So is the dispute between the Afghan Government and the US military serious or is it just a political show?

A day after President Hamid Karzai used The Washington Post to express his opposition to the current high-visibility US military presence, General David Petraeus, the commander of American forces, sent out his public-relations allies. According to "Afghan and US officials", Petraeus expressed "astonishment" and "disappointment" with the Post interview. He had warned Government advisors that the Karzai criticism threatened to undermine progress in the war and risked making the commander's position "untenable".

Specifically, Petraeus did not attend a scheduled meeting Sunday with Karzai. Instead he sought out Ashraf Ghani, who leads the Afghan government's planning on transition (and who has been a long-time favourite of Washington), to talk "hypothetical[ly]" of an inability to continue US operations. 

In his remarks to the Post, Karzai had said that there were too many American troops on the roads and criticised "night raids" by US special forces.

How then to dissect Petraeus' response? Well, first, the General is not to stomp away and catch the next flight to Washington. He has invested too much in this counter-insurgency campaign and has only been in the commander's post, having taken a demotion to lead the Afghan effort, for a few months.

Instead, Petraeus is telling the Afghan President to back off, especially at this time. NATO leaders, including President Obama, will be in Lisbon  to set a "timetable for transition". That euphemism, covering the equally euphemistic declaration of "turning portions of Afghanistan security control over to Afghan forces", will provide the cover for the US military to set aside Obama's July 2011 withdrawal date and plan for a stay until at least 2014. 

Those tactics fray, if not unravel, if Kabul does not express its support for the American military approach. So the Afghan President has to be told off and all-is-well "corrections" have to be given. One "NATO official" put out the message, "We've been assured that President Karzai is fully supportive of the joint strategy, that we share the desire for Afghan forces to take the lead, and that we've worked hard together to address all the issues over which [Karzai] raised concerns and will continue to do so."

A "senior Afghan official" --- on behalf of Karzai or Petraeus? --- did his part, saying it is "categorically false" to interpret Karzai's remarks as a "vote of no-confidence in Gen. Petraeus", as there are many "common interests and common objectives": These are two men who are comfortable working with each other. There's an environment of mutual respect, and trust has been building among them."

So is this just a glitch, another of those periodic episodes where Karzai --- who has a tendency to "go off his meds", in the pejorative of US officials --- poses but then allows the US military to proceed? A "senior administration official" insisted, "The fact that [these] were concerns to him was not a surprise to us," but one NATO official was not as soothing, "It's pretty clear that you no longer have a reliable partner in Kabul."

Washington's solution --- for now --- will be to match Petraeus' stick with the carrot of public acclaim of Karzai as the Afghan leader. A "senior administration official" declared, "We are making sure that he is the person who is out front."

But the weekend has demonstrated that --- even if Karzai is just posturing for domestic opinion --- the strategy is not necessarily secure. One "foreign diplomat" fretted over the latest episode:

It undermines the support and trust of the Western countries. That's what the NATO summit should be all about. Are we on the same page? Or are we in different worlds?