Obama’s Lightning Visit to Kabul
Significantly, President Obama had to squeeze into his busy schedule a lightning visit to Kabul, arriving after dusk on Sunday (March 31) amid strict secrecy primarily for security reasons, and leaving before dawn six hours later after delivering a stern warning to President Karzai to set right his act by focusing on good governance, rule of law, elimination of corruption and uprooting of the expanding poppy cultivation and the narcotics mafia, reportedly dominated by his own brother, Ahmed Wali Karzai.
That he elected to personally deliver the message shows the extent of vexation that the Karzai regime was causing his administration. The Afghan ruler, elected recently for a second term in a fraud-tainted election, has undoubtedly forfeited the goodwill of the US he enjoyed earlier.
Despite the security environ necessitating a stealthy visit, President Obama must have felt the compulsion to undertake the trip to personally deliver the rebuke to Karzai for his inability to set up a stable, progressive and self-sustaining government, so that the US and coalition forces could withdraw by handing over the security responsibility to the Afghans authorities.
People at large compare their status under the rule of Taliban with that under Karzai. The Taliban had focused on eliminating corruption, drug and crime and delivering speedy justice during their stint and won the appreciation of the ordinary Afghan for doing so, despite their fanatic, bizarre and egregious beliefs and conduct. Their follies pale into insignificance compared with those of the Karzai regime.
Afghan government has therefore to show itself to be a viable alternative to what the Taliban offer. This perception militates against the primary aim of Western occupation of Afghanistan - to preclude the possibility of the return to power of Al Qaeda-backed Taliban.
President Obama had to reach Kabul to bring home to Karzai the significance of an honest administration devoted to the welfare of the people. Karzai must take measures that speak for themselves and promote a positive perception among the people of his country.
According to reliable sources, the Taliban have set up shadow institutions from the village to provincial levels. People approach them for the solution of their problems instead of the officials of the Karzai administration whose image is badly tainted owing to widespread corruption. They are viewed as bearing only a nuisance value for the common man who approaches them only when it becomes inescapable. No wonder, Karzai is called the mayor of Kabul.
The Obama administration has decided to win over the hearts and minds of the Afghan people instead of solely focusing on a military defeat of the Taliban and Al Qaeda. It is for this reason that the American commander of the operation has issued special instructions to his men to be extra careful in avoiding civil casualties.
The US efforts are now focused on effecting a stable, progressive government holding out better prospects for the Afghan youth. But, in these efforts to peel them off the insurgency, the Karzai government has been a stumbling block. The perception in the country that the Karzai regime had rigged the elections last August was strengthened further by his move to have himself the power to appoint all five members of the supervisory body. Even he has accepted that the elections were rigged.
But, from the viewpoint of the common man, the most irksome problem is that of corruption. For, corruption permeates the entire official machinery. A Western official in Kabul is reported by the New York Times (3/30) to have remarked, “What’s the number one thing everyone is angry about? It is not the insurgency, it is not the drug trade; it is the government.”
From the point of view of law and order, Afghanistan now strikes worse than the Wild West. Warlords control vast tracts in almost all parts of the country. The military commanders who fought the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan in the 1980s have set up areas of their operations where their gunmen roam freely causing havoc and misery among the people and extracting money on one pretext or another.
In the crucial Kandahar area, several such armed groups could be seen roaming city streets and countryside toting guns and bullying citizens. Ahmed Wali Karzai, brother of the President, controls them. His reach, according to a NY Times report, could be seen during the Presidential elections last August. He cut deals with insurgent groups to refrain from attacking polling stations, and then helped orchestrate a large-scale campaign of forging ballots on his brother’s behalf.
Officials being hand in gloves with the drug barons, there is hardly any let or hindrance in the cultivation, sale and surreptitious export of opium and its by-products including heroin. In 2000, the Taliban leadership declared opium as a ‘haram’ (prohibited) commodity and its production was banned. Its production went down by 90%. Soon after the US-led invasion, production started going up quickly. By 2005, Afghanistan had regained its position as the world’s number one opium producer and its output accounted for 90% of world output. The current opium crop is estimated at $65 billion. Only a negligible percentage of that huge amount goes to the farmers, bulk of it is usurped by the drug mafia, who line the pockets of concerned high officials and political leaders to ensure smooth operation of the system.
The drug money has not only funded an expanding guerrilla force, it has increased the Taliban’s role in protecting opium farmers and drug runners that has given them real control over the core of the country’s economy. This may be gauged from the fact that the total GDP amounts to a mere $10 billion as against $65 billion being the value of total opium products from a crop of around 6,900 tons.
For the solution of the Afghanistan problem, President Obama has correctly evaluated the need for civilian measures. And, Karzai hardly fits into the vision of successful players of the game. He is too entrenched in the current corrupt scenario to be expected to clean the Aegean stables. The US will have to launch a massive program costing tens of billions of dollars to provide the farmers with alternative means of livelihood and to the youth a sanguine outlook on life furnished by a well-planned education.
The additional 30,000 US troops that are being launched in the Afghan arena to seek a quick end to the problem are estimated to cost $30 billion annually apart from an ever-increasing loss of life. The restructuring of the country’s economy may cost much less. And, it would pacify the country. A narco-state can be pacified only when it ceases to be a narco-state. That situation can hardly be achieved through the barrel of a gun.
Till then, even the President of the sole super power will have to visit stealthily an area replete with weapons and confused young men mesmerized by obscurantist scallywags.
arifhussaini@hotmail.com
