UPDATED Afghanistan Eyeball-to-Eyeball: Obama Administration v. Karzai

UPDATED 1740 GMT: "He's an SOB, but He's Our SOB." Spencer Ackerman picks out the most striking passage --- compromise or climbdown? --- from the US/NATO acceptance of the authority of Ahmed Wali Karzai:

"He is also one of the area’s biggest entrepreneurs, with business and real estate ventures across southern Afghanistan. 'One thing, he is a successful businessman,' the senior NATO official said. 'He can create jobs.'"

UPDATED 0745 GMT: Compromise, Climbdown, or Both? Another article by Dexter Filkins in The New York Times offers the latest in political manoeuvres and signals: "Despite Doubt, Karzai Brother Retains Power".

The gist of the piece is that the US and NATO want Ahmed Wali Karzai removed from Afghanistan's second city, Kandahar, where a US-led military offensive is soon expected but that they cannot force this:

“My recommendation was, remove him,” a senior NATO officer said this week, speaking on the condition of anonymity. “But for President Karzai, he’s looking at his brother, an elected official, and nobody has come to him with pictures of his brother loading heroin into a truck.”

So the spin now is that Ahmed Karzai, who has been on the CIA payroll for many years despite his alleged connections with drug distribution and insurgent movements, will now be used "to help persuade Taliban fighters to give up".

Afghanistan Special: Mr Obama’s Wild Ride — Why?

Finish the sentence: "Can't live with him...."

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Remember how on Monday, as we were trying to sort out the Obama flying visit to Afghanistan, we concluded, "There is no more political space if Karzai continues to be a corruption/drug/ mismanagement/backroom-dealing problem."


Well, check out the spin, as both Americans and Afghans try to frame the outcome of the Obama encounter with Afghan President Hamid Karzai in Tuesday's article by Dexter Filkins and Mark Landler in The New York Times:

This month, with President Hamid Karzai looking ahead to a visit to the White House, he received a terse note from aides to President Obama: Your invitation has been revoked.

The reason, according to American officials, was Mr. Karzai’s announcement that he was emasculating an independent panel that had discovered widespread fraud in Mr. Karzai’s re-election last year.

Incensed, Mr. Karzai extended an invitation of his own — to Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the Iranian president, who flew to Kabul and delivered a fiery anti-American speech inside Afghanistan’s presidential palace.

“Karzai was enraged,” said an Afghan with knowledge of the events, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the delicacy of the issue. “He invited Ahmadinejad to spite the Americans.”

The dispute was smoothed over only this week, when Mr. Obama flew to Kabul for a surprise dinner with Mr. Karzai. White House officials emphasized that the most important purpose of Mr. Obama’s trip to Afghanistan was to visit American troops there.

But the red carpet treatment of Mr. Ahmadinejad is just one example of how Mr. Karzai is putting distance between himself and his American sponsors, prominent Afghans and American officials here said. Even as Mr. Obama pours tens of thousands of additional American troops into the country to help defend Mr. Karzai’s government, Mr. Karzai now often voices the view that his interests and the United States’ no longer coincide.

Let's decode those opening paragraphs....

US Side: Karzai has been a naughty boy. We had to slap him down with the non-invite to Washington. (And, if you go by Monday's spin, President Obama went a step further with the warning to Karzai in their 20 to 30-minute meeting: No More Corruption.)

Afghan Side: You're trying to slap Karzai down? Didn't work.

The Times piece is laden with this conflict. Their chief US source, "a senior official", spoke in serious tones, “We’re trying to find this balance of keeping pressure on him, without setting up bluffs that can be called. We’re coming to terms with dealing with the Karzai we have.” Filkins and Landler add, however --- presumably reflecting the American officials --- "Mr. Karzai has resisted all but the most feeble gestures" in fighting graft.

Nothing new in that theme, however. Go back to Hillary Clinton's effort a year ago to clip Karzai with the warning that the Obama Administration would not accept continued failure in governance; if it continued, the US would be looking towards a more effective Government. (Newsflash: all that Washington pressure ended in a Karzai win in a suspect election.)

No, what distinguishes this article are the Afghan sources. Consider this picture:

In January, Mr. Karzai invited about two dozen prominent Afghan media and business figures to a lunch at the palace. At the lunch, he expressed a deep cynicism about America’s motives, and of the burden he bears in trying to keep the United States at bay.

“He has developed a complete theory of American power,” said an Afghan who attended the lunch and who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of retribution. “He believes that America is trying to dominate the region, and that he is the only one who can stand up to them.”

Mr. Karzai said that, left alone, he could strike a deal with the Taliban, but that the United States refuses to allow him. The American goal, he said, was to keep the Afghan conflict going, and thereby allow American troops to stay in the country.

The description of the lunch was largely affirmed by two other Afghans who attended and who also declined to be identified. The person who described the meeting said some of the participants urged Mr. Karzai to reconsider his views and his plans to be more assertive with the United States. “We are a poor country,” he said. “We are depending on the United States.”

There are two theories racing amongst US observers of Afghanistan. One is that the sources are Karzai allies who are putting out the President's message that he is not bowing to Washington. The other is that the sources are not part of Karzai's inner circle and are talking to US reporters because they are worried the President will alienate the Obama Administration once and for all, leaving Kabul to face the insurgent threat on its own.

Pick either and the central message is still the same. Karzai is confident enough and angry enough (and arrogant enough?) that he is not necessarily going to carry out the repentance that was supposedly demanded by Obama on Sunday. On the eve of the reported US offensive to break the insurgency in Kandahar, he is going to complete the phrase for Washington, "Can't live with him....

....Can't live without him."

UPDATED Afghanistan Special: Mr Obama's Wild Ride --- Why?

OBAMA WITH AMBASSADOR EIKENBERRY AND COMMANDER MCCHRYSTAL

UPDATE 0925 GMT: We've added new information and analysis.

So let me get this right. The President of the US devotes 25 hours to a round-trip flight to spend six hours in Afghanistan, of which a total of 20 minutes is with the Afghan President?  

Why? 

Afghanistan Video: Obama Speech to US Troops (28 March)

1. Was Obama delivering a message to Afghan leader Hamid Karzai that he could trust to no one else? If so, what could that important message be? A dressing down of Karzai? (But note that Obama's special envoy Richard Holbrooke, who is persona non grata in Afghanistan after last August's post-election shouting match with Karzai, did not make the trip.) Confirmation that the US military was going to pursue the offensive, long dangled before the media, against the southern Afghan city of Kandahar? 


2. Or was this just a giant pep talk/photo opportunity for Obama in front of US troops overseas? 

3. Or both? 

Have to honest here: I don't have an answer to this puzzle. Nor, however, do many in the "mainstream" media. The BBC, in stolid BBC tones, tried to get away with "reassurance to Afghan allies" who had not been visited by Obama during his Presidency --- frankly, that's pretty lame, since the President could have done this in a more organised and less last-minute fashion. (Even this was muddled in White House statements to the press: some advisors said the Afghans only had an hour's notice; some said Karzai's office was told last Thursday.) CNN has no information beyond the asserted "need to wipe out terror networks". 

Helene Cooper of The New York Times proclaims: 

President Obama personally delivered pointed criticism to President Hamid Karzai in a face-to-face meeting on Sunday, flying here for an unannounced visit that reflected growing vexation with Mr. Karzai as America’s military commitment to defeat the Taliban insurgency has deepened.... 

While Mr. Obama said “the American people are encouraged by the progress that has been made,” as he stood beside Mr. Karzai at the heavily fortified presidential palace, Mr. Obama also emphasized that work remained to be done on the governance issues that have frustrated American officials over the past year. “We also want to continue to make progress on the civilian process,” Mr. Obama said. He mentioned several areas, including anticorruption efforts and the rule of law. 

The problem with Cooper's supposed scoop of an answer is that it is based on cherry-picking Obama's public statement to the press after his brief encounter with Karzai. As she admits --- lower in the story --- "the language used by Mr. Obama and Mr. Karzai in their private discussions was not disclosed". So here's the key message: 

Gen. James L. Jones, the national security adviser, told reporters on Air Force One en route to Afghanistan that the administration wanted Mr. Karzai to “understand that in his second term, there are certain things that have not been paid attention to, almost since Day 1.” 

General Jones said that the Afghan president “needs to be seized with how important” the issue of corruption, in particular, is for American officials.

Washington Post reporters take the same line, quoting Jones, "In [Karzai's] second term, there are certain things that have not been paid attention to, almost since Day One." More significantly, the Post gets confirmation from a Karzai adviser and former Foreign Minister, Rangin Spanta, that the discussion with Obama focused on corruption, reconstruction, and "strengthening Afghan state entities". 

An EA reader passes on the slightly different take on Al Jazeera English TV that the President's message was that Karzai should take on a more commander-in-chief role regarding the war so that it eventually becomes Karzai’s war instead of Obama’s. Al Jazeera English's website, however, sticks with the corruption-first theme.

Whichever of the versions you choose above, here's the take-away point: the Americans are now so distrustful of Karzai that the President had to personally lay down the law, taking more than a day out to deliver the message. The supposedly regular conference calls between Obama and Karzai just wouldn't do. If true, that tells you how solid this US-Afghan relationship is and/or how big the stakes are going to be in the near-future.

But then pause for a moment: if this was really the key meeting to declare the big push against the Taliban and other insurgents, why no more than 30 minutes? Surely a momentous decision like this would merit just a bit more discussion. Did Obama take only a half-hour because he wanted to show who was boss, giving Karzai no more of his time? Or did Karzai --- the man who secured a dubious election win in defiance of the US Government, who sent Obama's envoy packing, who has reduced the US Ambassador to a shamed figurehead --- set the limit?

My suspicion is that Washington, on the verge of a military show that will test Obama's decision to follow his commanders and go boots-first in the US intervention, still isn't secure about the Afghan President. If so, however, the Obama Administration has just fired its biggest shot possible, short of trying to toss Karzai out. There is no more political space if Karzai continues to be a corruption/drug/mismanagement/backroom-dealing problem. 

And in the case, the American ride will be far wilder than that taken by Mr Obama in the last 48 hours.

Afghanistan Video: Obama Speech to US Troops (28 March)

Afghanistan: $6 Billion and Still No Effective Police Force? (Miller)

UPDATE 1600 GMT: This just in from The Independent on Sunday of London:

"A series of internal Foreign Office papers...lay bare the deep concerns of British officials over the standard of recruits to the Afghan National Police (ANP), ranging from high casualty rates and illiteracy to poor vetting and low pay.

The memos, which warn that building an effective police force 'will take many years', also reveal how non-existent 'ghost recruits' may account for up to a quarter of the purported strength of the police force, often the front line against the Taliban insurgency. The "attrition rate" among police officers – including losses caused by deaths, desertion and dismissals, often due to positive drug tests – is as high as 60 per cent in Helmand province.

....The documents reveal that half the latest batch of recruits in the province "initially tested positive for narcotics". British officials also raised concerns over the ANP's involvement in bribery, collusion with the drug trade, intimidation of schoolchildren and "limited engagement with the community".



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T. Christian Miller writes in AlterNet:

Mohammad Moqim watches in despair as his men struggle with their AK-47 automatic rifles, doing their best to hit man-size targets 50 meters away.

Afghanistan Special: CIA Memorandum “How to Sell the War to Europe

A few of the police trainees lying prone in the mud are decent shots, but the rest shoot clumsily, and fumble as they try to reload their weapons. The Afghan National Police (ANP) captain sighs as he dismisses one group of trainees and orders 25 more to take their places on the firing line. "We are still at zero," says Captain Moqim, 35, an eight-year veteran of the force. "They don't listen, are undisciplined, and will never be real policemen."


Poor marksmanship is the least of it. Worse, crooked Afghan cops supply much of the ammunition used by the Taliban, according to Saleh Mohammed, an insurgent commander in Helmand province. The bullets and rocket-propelled grenades sold by the cops are cheaper and of better quality than the ammo at local markets, he says. It's easy for local cops to concoct credible excuses for using so much ammunition, especially because their supervisors try to avoid areas where the Taliban are active. Mohammed says local police sometimes even stage fake firefights so that if higher-ups question their outsize orders for ammo, villagers will say they've heard fighting.

America has spent more than $6 billion since 2002 in an effort to create an effective Afghan police force, buying weapons, building police academies, and hiring defense contractors to train the recruits—but the program has been a disaster. More than $322 million worth of invoices for police training were approved even though the funds were poorly accounted for, according to a government audit, and fewer than 12 percent of the country's police units are capable of operating on their own. Ambassador Richard Holbrooke, the State Department's top representative in the region, has publicly called the Afghan police "an inadequate organization, riddled with corruption." During the Obama administration's review of Afghanistan policy last year, "this issue received more attention than any other except for the question of U.S. troop levels," Holbrooke later told Newsweek. "We drilled down deep into this."

The worst of it is that the police are central to Washington's plans for getting out of Afghanistan. The U.S.-backed government in Kabul will never have popular support if it can't keep people safe in their own homes and streets. Yet in a United Nations poll last fall, more than half the Afghan respondents said the police are corrupt. Police commanders have been implicated in drug trafficking, and when U.S. Marines moved into the town of Aynak last summer, villagers accused the local police force of extortion, assault, and rape.

The public's distrust of the cops is palpable in the former insurgent stronghold of Marja. Village elders welcomed the U.S. Marines who recently drove out the Taliban, but told the Americans flatly they don't want the ANP to return. "The people of Marja will tell you that one of their greatest fears was the police coming back," says Lt. Gen. William Caldwell, who took over in November as chief of the U.S. program to expand and improve Afghanistan's security forces. "You constantly hear these stories about who was worse: the Afghan police that were there or the Taliban." The success of America's counterinsurgency strategy depends on the cops, who have greater contact with local communities than the Army does. "This is not about seizing land or holding terrain; it's about the people," says Caldwell. "You have to have a police force that the people accept, believe in, and trust."

More than a year after Barack Obama took office, the president is still discovering how bad things are. At a March 12 briefing on Afghanistan with his senior advisers, he asked whether the police will be ready when America's scheduled drawdown begins in July 2011, according to a senior official who was in the room. "It's inconceivable, but in fact for eight years we weren't training the police," replied Caldwell, taking part in the meeting via video link from Afghanistan. "We just never trained them before. All we did was give them a uniform." The president looked stunned. "Eight years," he said. "And we didn't train police? It's mind-boggling." The room was silent.

Efforts to build a post-Taliban police force have been plagued from the start by unrealistic goals, poor oversight, and slapdash hiring. Patrolmen were recruited locally, issued weapons, and placed on the beat with little or no formal training. Most of their techniques have been picked up on the job—including plenty of ugly habits. Even now, Caldwell says, barely a quarter of the 98,000-member force has received any formal instruction. The people who oversaw much of the training that did take place were contractors—many of them former American cops or sheriffs. They themselves had little proper direction, and the government officials overseeing their activities did not bother to examine most expenses under $3,000, leaving room for abuse. Amazingly, no single agency or individual ever had control of the training program for long, so lines of accountability were blurred.

Read rest of article....

Afghanistan Special: CIA Memorandum "How to Sell the War to Europe"

Wikileaks publishes a CIA "Red Cell" memorandum (other sources have confirmed that it is genuine), outlining how to influence public opinion in France and Germany. The guidance was produced after the fall of the Netherlands Government over the issue of troop deployment in Afghanistan, indicating Washington's fears that other European countries could also withdraw political and military support for the intervention.

Marked Confidential/No Foreign Nationals, the document is distinguished by some sweeping assertions:

1. President Obama is a great salesman for the war.

2. "Women" are also great salespeople or, to be precise, the war can be presented as a fight for women's rights, especially to the French.



3. The prospect of disorder from drugs and refugees, as well as Germany's standing in NATO, should scare Germans into prolonging their support for the war.

Afghanistan: US Military Holds On to Detainees

Afghanistan: Sustaining West European Support for the NATO-led Mission—Why Counting on Apathy Might Not Be Enough (C//NF)

The fall of the Dutch Government over its troop commitment to Afghanistan demonstrates the fragility of European support for the NATO-led ISAF mission.


Some NATO states, notably France and Germany, have counted on public apathy about Afghanistan to increase their contributions to the mission, but indifference might turn into active hostility if spring and summer fighting results in an upsurge in military or Afghan civilian casualties and if a Dutch-style debate spills over into other states contributing troops. The Red Cell invited a CIA expert on strategic communication and analysts following public opinion at the State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research (INR) to consider information approaches that might better link the Afghan mission to the priorities of French, German, and other Western European publics. (C//NF)

Public Apathy Enables Leaders To Ignore Voters. . . (C//NF)

The Afghanistan mission’s low public salience has allowed French and German leaders to disregard popular opposition and steadily increase their troop contributions to the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF). Berlin and Paris currently maintain the third and fourth highest ISAF troop levels, despite the opposition of 80 percent of German and
French respondents to increased ISAF deployments, according to INR polling in fall 2009.

• Only a fraction (0.1-1.3 percent) of French and German respondents identified “Afghanistan” as the most urgent issue facing their nation in an open-ended question, according to the same polling. These publics ranked “stabilizing Afghanistan” as among the lowest priorities for US and European leaders, according to polls by the German Marshall Fund (GMF) over the past two years.

• According to INR polling in the fall of 2009, the view that the Afghanistan mission is a waste of resources and “not our problem” was cited as the most common reason for opposing ISAF by German respondents and was the second most common reason by French respondents. But the “not our problem” sentiment also suggests that, so for, sending troops to Afghanistan is not yet on most voters’
radar. (C//NF)

. . . But Casualties Could Precipitate Backlash (C//NF)
If some forecasts of a bloody summer in Afghanistan come to pass, passive French and German dislike of their troop presence could turn into active and politically potent hostility. The tone of previous debate suggests that a spike in French or German casualties or in Afghan civilian casualties could become a tipping point in converting passive opposition into active calls for immediate withdrawal. (C//NF)

French and German commitments to NATO are a safeguard against a precipitous departure, but leaders fearing a backlash ahead of spring regional elections might become unwilling to pay a political price for increasing troop levels or extending deployments. If domestic politics forces the Dutch to depart, politicians elsewhere might cite a precedent for “listening to the voters.” French and German leaders have over the past two years taken steps to preempt an upsurge of opposition but their vulnerability may be higher now:

• To strengthen support, President Sarkozy called on the National Assembly—whose approval is not required for ISAF—to affirm the French mission after the combat deaths of 10 soldiers in August 2008. The government won the vote handily, defusing a potential crisis and giving Sarkozy cover to deploy approximately 3,000 additional troops. Sarkozy, however, may now be more vulnerable to an upsurge in
casualties because his party faces key regional elections this March and the already low support for ISAF has fallen by one-third since March 2009, according to INR polling in the fall of 2009.

• Political fallout from the German-ordered Kunduz airstrike in September 2009 which killed dozens of Afghan civilians, demonstrated the potential pressure on the German Government when Afghanistan issues come up on the public radar. Concern about the potential effects of Afghanistan issues on the state-level election in North Rhine-Westphalia in May 2010 could make Chancellor Merkel—who has shown an unwillingness to expend political capital on Afghanistan—more hesitant about increasing or even sustaining Germany’s ISAF contributions. (C//NF)

Tailoring Messaging Could Forestall or At Least Contain Backlash (C//NF)

Western European publics might be better prepared to tolerate a spring and summer of greater military and civilian casualties if they perceive clear connections between outcomes in Afghanistan and their own priorities. A consistent and iterative strategic communication program across NATO troop contributors that taps into the key concerns of specific Western European audiences could provide a buffer if today’s apathy becomes tomorrow’s opposition to ISAF, giving politicians greater scope to support deployments to Afghanistan. (C//NF)

French Focused On Civilians and Refugees. Focusing on a message that ISAF benefits Afghan civilians and citing examples of concrete gains could limit and perhaps even reverse opposition to the mission. Such tailored messages could tap into acute French concern for civilians and refugees. Those who support ISAF in INR surveys from fall 2009 most frequently cited their perception that the mission helps Afghan civilians, while opponents most commonly argued that the mission hurts civilians. Contradicting the “ISAF does more harm than good” perception is clearly important, particularly for France’s Muslim minority:

• Highlighting Afghans’ broad support for ISAF could underscore the mission’s positive impact on civilians. About two-thirds of Afghans support the presence of ISAF forces in Afghanistan, according to a reliable ABC/BBC/ADR poll conducted in December 2009. According to INR polling in fall 2009, those French and German respondents who believed that the Afghan people oppose ISAF—48 percent and 52
percent, respectively—were more likely than others to oppose participation in the mission.

• Conversely, messaging that dramatizes the potential adverse consequences of an ISAF defeat for Afghan civilians could leverage French (and other European) guilt for abandoning them. The prospect of the Taliban rolling back hard-won progress on girls’ education could provoke French indignation, become a rallying point for France’s largely secular public, and give voters a reason to support a good and
necessary cause despite casualties.

• The media controversy generated by Paris’s decision to expel 12 Afghan refugees in late 2009 suggests that stories about the plight of Afghan refugees are likely to resonate with French audiences. The French government has already made combating Afghan human trafficking networks a priority and would probably support an information campaign that a NATO defeat in Afghanistan could
precipitate a refugee crisis. (C//NF)

Germans Worried About Price And Principle Of ISAF Mission. German opponents of ISAF worry that a war in Afghanistan is a waste of resources, not a German problem, and
objectionable in principle, judging from an INR poll in the fall of 2009. Some German opposition to ISAF might be muted by proof of progress on the ground, warnings about the potential consequences for Germany of a defeat, and reassurances that Germany is a valued partner in a necessary NATO-led mission.

• Underscoring the contradiction between German pessimism about ISAF and Afghan optimism about the mission’s progress could challenge skeptics’ assertions that the mission is a waste of resources. The same ABC/BBC/ADR poll revealed that 70 percent of Afghans thought their country was heading in the right direction and would improve in 2010, while a 2009 GMF poll showed that about the same proportion of German respondents were pessimistic about ever stabilizing Afghanistan.

• Messages that dramatize the consequences of a NATO defeat for specific German interests could counter the widely held perception that Afghanistan is not Germany’s problem. For example, messages that illustrate how a defeat in Afghanistan could heighten Germany’s exposure to terrorism, opium, and refugees might help to make the war more salient to skeptics.

• Emphasis on the mission’s multilateral and humanitarian aspects could help ease Germans’ concerns about waging any kind of war while appealing to their desire to support multilateral efforts. Despite their allergy to armed conflict, Germans were willing to break precedent and use force in the Balkans in the 1990s to show commitment to their NATO allies. German respondents cited helping their allies as one of the most compelling reasons for supporting ISAF, according to an INR poll in
the fall of 2009. (C//NF)

Appeals by President Obama and Afghan Women Might Gain Traction (C//NF)

The confidence of the French and German publics in President Obama’s ability to handle foreign affairs in general and Afghanistan in particular suggest that they would be receptive to his direct affirmation of their importance to the ISAF mission—and sensitive to direct expressions of disappointment in allies who do not help.

• According to a GMF poll conducted in June 2009, about 90 percent of French and German respondents were confident in the President’s ability to handle foreign policies. The same poll revealed that 82 percent of French and 74 percent of German respondents were confident in the President’s ability to stabilize Afghanistan, although the subsequent wait for the US surge strategy may have eroded some of this confidence.

• The same poll also found that, when respondents were reminded that President Obama himself had asked for increased deployments to Afghanistan, their support for granting this request increased dramatically, from 4 to 15 percent among French respondents and from 7 to 13 percent among Germans. The total percentages may be small but they suggest significant sensitivity to disappointing a president seen as broadly in sync with European concerns. (C//NF)

Afghan women could serve as ideal messengers in humanizing the ISAF role in combating the Taliban because of women’s ability to speak personally and credibly about their experiences under the Taliban, their aspirations for the future, and their fears of a Taliban victory. Outreach initiatives that create media opportunities for Afghan women to share
their stories with French, German, and other European women could help to overcome pervasive skepticism among women in Western Europe toward the ISAF mission.

• According to INR polling in the fall of 2009, French women are 8 percentage points less likely to support the mission than are men, and German women are 22 percentage points less likely to support the war than are men.

• Media events that feature testimonials by Afghan women would probably be most effective if broadcast on programs that have large and disproportionately female audiences. (C//NF)