Dumb like a fox, how Karzai outwitted US diplomats

Summary

Humayoon's report for the Institute for the Study of War on President Hamid Karzai and the Afghan elections, reveals just how ham-fisted the US can be in the execution of foreign policy.

What was gained by S Ambassador Eikenberry making such a public song and dance of his distrust of Karzai during the election and why did he make a big deal of visiting the office of rival candidates during the campaign.

And why did US Special Representative Richard Holbrooke press so hard for a run-off against Abdullah Abdullah and why did his mate Peter Galbraith (the sacked UN number 2) take such a publicaly strident line against President Karzai?

Above all why did the US steer its own public into believing that it opposed a Karzai victory in the elections? Humayoon points out that most Afghans were against a second round run-off.

Hat tip to British journalist Nick Fielding for pointing out the Humayoon report: Here's Nick's take on it

Humayoon says that Karzai was able to outsmart US diplomats because he had formed alliances with a select group of regional and local leaders, including Ismail Khan, General Abdul Rashid Dostum, Haji Mohammad Muhaqiq and Gul Agha Sherzai. He says that the choice of vice president and defence minister Marshal Fahim was critical to the success of Karzai's campaign.
Karzai's political machine also included the nucleus of a new political elite, savvy and connected, whose reach to areas outside Kabul, says Humayoon, "is much greater than generally recognised. Often their influence beyond the capital exists through personal, commercial, family, and political networks, rather than through official institutions that are easily recognizable to the international community."
Humayoon says that the Kabul regime has not so much been losing out to insurgents in more remote parts of Afghanistan. Instead, both Kabul and the insurgents have been competing to fill political vacuums, where there has been no political life for more than a generation. This makes perfect sense and is a perceptive insight.
The corollary is that although the insurgency has been expanding, few people have noticed the extent to which Karzai and his allies have also been extending their political networks outside the capital.

It therefore follows that there is little point in trying to explain events in Afghanistan by using such terms as 'corruption', 'fraud' or 'warlords'. This form of analysis belongs to a different era. Of course, corruption continues to exist, but concentrating on this hides the growing commercial interests and the rise of an "ambitious, wealthy and influential political class"....Already, we can see that Karzai's efforts to lead from the front on the question of reintegrating Taliban supporters is not necessarily an action that stems from political weakness, but from a wilyness and political acumen that have so far been much underestimated. There's life in the old fox yet.

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