Last chance in Kabul

Nov 5th 2009
From The Economist print edition

The election was a disaster. Hamid Karzai must reform quickly if he wants to save his country, and himself

AP

THE election is over and it was a charade. A fortnight ago, Western leaders pushed Hamid Karzai, Afghanistan’s president, into a second round of voting to wash out the stain of wholesale fraud (1m-odd votes, most in Mr Karzai’s favour were declared invalid). Now Barack Obama and others have rushed to congratulate Mr Karzai on winning another five years. Never mind that he was unchallenged because his rival, Abdullah Abdullah, withdrew, complaining that officials who oversaw the cheating had not been sacked. Never mind that those same Afghan officials quickly ruled Mr Karzai the winner, despite doubts about the legal process (see article).

Many in Afghanistan were relieved to be spared a second poll in the face of Taliban threats, voter indifference and the approaching winter. Westerners coping with the crisis were also relieved that they had averted, for now, street protests by Dr Abdullah’s supporters, which would have risked political violence and open Pushtun-Tajik rivalry.

But that is small comfort. The election has been a debacle for both Afghanistan and the West. It cost $300m, but it has deepened the country’s crisis. Since the vote, more than 170 NATO soldiers have been killed. Ever more Westerners understandably ask why their compatriots must keep dying to prop up the inept and corrupt Mr Karzai. Opinion in Britain is souring fast. This week five soldiers killed by an Afghan policeman added to the country’s heavy casualties.

Afghans, too, are losing faith in the West. The American military commander in Kabul, General Stanley McChrystal, has asked for a big reinforcement—rumoured to be about 40,000 extra troops, which would make NATO’s deployment bigger than the Soviet Union’s ill-fated one—to “gain the initiative and reverse insurgent momentum”. He says that without more Western troops and massively larger Afghan forces, more Afghans could throw in their lot with the Taliban. If so, the West will fail. His counter-insurgency plan seeks to protect the Afghan population and win its allegiance to a legitimate Afghan government. That is why this election has been so damaging: Mr Karzai’s legitimacy is what has suffered most.

Mr Karzai has a way of ignoring his Western protectors. But he should not think that he is safe for the next five years, or that America needs him more than he needs it. Mr Obama must soon make his decision, put off for the past two months, on whether to heed General McChrystal’s call for more troops, and stake his presidency on the Afghan war. Those, including this newspaper, who have advocated a big surge are finding it harder to sustain the case. Many in Mr Obama’s entourage think it is time to give up on Afghanistan; if that happens, Mr Karzai will not survive in power.

What Karzai must do

One would hope that Mr Obama made this threat explicit in his private telephone call to Mr Karzai where he offered those mistaken congratulations. This week Mr Karzai promised to remove the “stigma” of corruption and form an inclusive government that will be a “mirror of Afghanistan”. He even urged “our Taliban brothers to come home”.

These are fine words but it is deeds that count. Mr Karzai must appoint competent ministers and replace the sycophants in his palace; he should prosecute corrupt officials; he should move his brother, Ahmad Wali, accused of being both a drugs lord and in the pay of the CIA, away from his power-base in Kandahar; and he should boost programmes to woo Taliban fighters. Above all he should launch a reform of the constitution, devolving some of his over-centralised powers to parliament, and to provincial and district governors. Best of all would be to entrust that task to his rival, Dr Abdullah.

Is that a vain hope? Mr Karzai may yet be able to regain his authority, as most Afghans will care more about what he does with power than about how he got it. Now in his second and final term in the Arg, the fortress that was home to Afghan kings, Mr Karzai must choose his place in history. If he reforms boldly, he may yet be remembered as the father of post-Taliban Afghanistan, a modern-day Abdur Rahman, the 19th-century British-backed emir who united the country. But if he sticks to his old ways, Mr Karzai could become another Najibullah—the last Communist president who, abandoned by Moscow, was strung up in 1996 from a Kabul lamppost.