While Karzai might be a pain in the you know what, he's got a point

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/dec/04/hamid-karzai-us-security-deal-rationale

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Hamid Karzai is kind of a diplomatic pain in the ass.

Karzai has become an expert at sticking his finger in the eye of the United States – the same nation that has expended significant blood and treasure to keep him in power. Some examples include: once calling the Taliban insurgents ravaging his country "brothers", publicly accusing the United States of working with the Taliban to stage bombing attacks, or declaring that if a war broke between the US and Pakistan, he would side with Pakistan.<br /> <br />But Karzai's latest gaffe is perhaps his worst and most potentially damaging: namely his continued refusal to sign a bilateral security agreement (BSA) with that United States that will keep American troops in the country for the next 10 years. While this latest action is easy to chalk up as another example of Karzai's propensity for irrational, eccentric and brinkmanship-like behavior, there is a deeper backstory here. This blow-up du jour is not some outlier in the US-Afghan relationship, it's the culmination of years upon years of a poorly conceived US political and military strategy in Afghanistan that has treated Karzai and the Afghan people as a sideshow and collateral damage in the US global war against al-Qaida.

So while Karzai might be a pain in the ass – he's got a point.

Of course, the question of who is to blame doesn't change the fact that Karzai's current recalcitrance could have potentially disastrous consequences for the country he leads. Failure to affix his signature to the BSA could lead the US to pursue a so-called "zero option" and bring all of its troops home from Afghanistan. This would have a destabilizing cascade effect. First, the likely departure of all NATO troops; and potential cut off of billions in financial assistance from the United States. Considering that the budget of the Afghan security forces is larger than the revenues brought in by the Afghan government, that could be a serious problem and one that could lead to more instability and an even bloodier civil war than we've seen over the past several years. It is small wonder that one of the few political groups in Afghanistan to endorse Karzai's move is the Taliban.

Why is Karzai playing such a dangerous game of chicken? First, he knows that once he signs the BSA, he will lose all leverage with the United States, particularly in regard to the April presidential election that will choose his successor. Moreover, he appears to truly believe that the US would never actually withdraw all its troops from Afghanistan (no matter how many times US officials say it). But above all, Karzai simply doesn't appear to trust the United States.

None of this puts Karzai in a positive light, and his recent actions are impossible to defend. But the fight over the BSA is symptomatic of the way in which US policy in Afghanistan has gone far off the rails. Back in 2008 when Obama was running for president, he pledged to focus his energy on the war in Afghanistan, but he did little to prioritize his relationship with Karzai.

But the real trouble started with the decision to embrace the military's star-crossed dreams of population-centric counter-insurgency (COIN). As former US Ambassador to Afghanistan Karl Eikenberry noted in a devastating recent article in Foreign Affairs magazine:

Karzai disagreed intellectually, politically, and viscerally with the key pillars of the COIN campaign. The result was that while American military commanders tirelessly worked to persuade the Afghan president through factual presentation, deference, and occasional humor that the plan was working, they never seemed to consider that Karzai just might not be on board.

As reliant as he was on US aid, Karzai was in little position to resist. But since the success of any COIN campaign is deeply dependent on aligning the strategy of a host nation with their foreign military supporter, the lack of buy-in from Karzai had a disastrous impact. Rather than act as a partner in the US effort, Karzai became a constant spoiler. As US officials tried to make Karzai into something he wasn't – a competent, effective and popular leader – it led to more friction, which was further worsened by the increase in civilian casualties from the ramped up US war. While US officials are right to note that most of these deaths came at the hands of Taliban attacks, the cumulative effect of putting more US troops on the battlefield and stepping up operations meant that more Afghans were going to die.

Yet this has been the consistent failure of Obama's Afghanistan policy. The United States identified a military strategy for Afghanistan (slow the momentum of the Taliban) and the tactical means of trying to accomplish it (COIN), but offered no serious political strategy to accompany it. Unable to get Karzai to do what they wanted, they worked around him or simply disregarded him. When the US finally did begin to tepidly advance a political agenda, Karzai once again played the spoiler – in part fearful that he was being excluded from decisions about the country's future (and it must be said his own schizophrenic attitude toward political reconciliation with the Taliban).

The fact is, from day one there has been little thought given by this White House as to what would come after the Americans left. The result is continued military stalemate and little hope, in the near future, of a political settlement. Indeed, it seems tragically fitting that in the midst of this crisis, a US airstrike last week killed a child in southern Afghanistan – further symbolic evidence of the prioritization of military tactics to the disregard of Afghan politics.

This speaks to the long-standing divergence between Karzai's interests and those of America's. Ultimately, the US sees Afghanistan through the narrow prism of the war on terrorism – and eliminating a potential safe haven for future al-Qaida terrorists. As Obama coldly noted in 2009, during the midst of his Afghan policy review, he wasn't "interested in just being in Afghanistan for the sake of being in Afghanistan" but rather for how it advanced US national security interests.

This mindset placed the security of Americans over that of Afghans. To protect the former, the US was willing to put the latter in harm's way. At the same time, the administration consistently blanched at the potential domestic "political" blowback that would comes from jumpstarting a negotiating process with the Taliban, preferring instead to kick the military can down the road to 2014 and US troop withdrawal.

For Karzai, the brunt of the US war on terrorism was being borne by his people with little long-term payoff for Afghanistan. When he would say "Al Qaeda was driven out of Afghanistan in 2001. They have no base in Afghanistan. The war against terrorism is not in Afghan villages and is not in the Afghan countryside", he was stating an unpleasant truth that was glossed over by US policymakers. From this perspective, that Karzai's redline appears to be the entry of US troops into Afghan homes is hardly a coincidence.

In the end, Karzai will likely back down and sign the BSA. Unfortunately for the Afghan people, while the BSA – and the presence of US troops – may prevent immediately dire consequences, there is little reason for optimism that the country's 30+ years of civil war will end any time soon. So while Hamid Karzai might be a mercurial and paranoid leader who has made a bad situation vis-à-vis the United States that much worse, America's leaders would be wise to look at themselves in the mirror when casting blame. There's plenty to go around.

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