Hamid Karzai, accompanied by a number of senior Afghan officials, recently completed his first visit to Washington since his controversial reelection as president last year. Over the course of four days, Karzai met with US President Barack Obama and other American policy makers. He also participated in several media events. The trip was notable for its public displays of harmony between the Afghan and American governments, which concealed continuing bilateral tensions as well as unease about prospects of transforming the war into an Afghan-led effort.
Karzai’s arrival coincided with heightened American alarm about Islamist militancy in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Last month’s failed car bomb attempt in New York City surprised analysts, who doubted that the Pakistani Taliban had the capability to try to conduct a terrorist attack in the US homeland. Although Washington policy makers recognize that the relationship between the Afghan and Pakistani Taliban is complex, they had considered both movements primarily a regional threat lacking the global operational reach of Al-Qaeda.
Before Karzai’s arrival in Washington, the White House instructed US officials to cease making public criticisms of the Afghan president, which the Obama national security team had been doing since taking office last January. Both strategic and tactical considerations led to the change in public policy. Despite widespread allegations that his reelection was fraudulent, and Karzai’s continuing difficulties with the Afghan parliament, he has consolidated power in Kabul, depriving Washington of the option of supporting an alternative Afghan political leader of national stature. The administration continues to cultivate some local Afghan leaders, but their influence is inherently limited.
In terms of tactics, it had become clear that Karzai responds very poorly to public criticism. After Obama officials complained earlier this year about Karzai’s inability to address such core problems as government corruption, weak civilian institutions and poor Afghan military performance, Karzai publicly accused Americans of condoning electoral fraud in an effort to block his reelection and indicated that he sympathized with the Taliban’s war aims.
In their joint media appearance following their 12 May White House meeting, President Obama described public perceptions of US-Afghan tensions as “overstated.” He characterized bilateral ties as a strategic partnership based on mutual respect and shared interests that would endure even after he and Karzai left office. As testimony to the latter, Obama stressed how American forces were following his injunction to minimize Afghan civilian casualties, an issue of acute tension between the two countries in recent years, even at the risk of suffering higher US military casualties as a result.
Karzai praised the US military for constraining its military operations to reduce threats to civilians. He also thanked the Obama administration for increasing the flow of US military and civilian resources to Afghanistan, which he pledged would not be misused. Karzai subsequently underscored the importance of the American commitment to transfer the US-led detention centers in Afghanistan, which some human rights groups argue employ torture, to Afghan government control by the beginning of next year.
Obama claimed that the US and Afghan war strategies were effectively meeting many of the performance benchmarks established last year. He cited recent coalition military victories, improvements in Afghan government capacity and enhanced support from European countries as well as Pakistan. Obama said that this progress, especially in developing Afghan military forces and civilian agencies, was creating the conditions needed to transfer leadership of the counterinsurgency from NATO to Kabul beginning next year.
In this regard, Obama restated his controversial position that he aimed to begin withdrawing some American combat troops from Afghanistan in July 2011, though he acknowledged that only about half of the new American “surge” troops had yet to arrive on the ground, leaving the US force total considerably short of the 98,000 military personnel cap. A more serious problem is the persistent misalignment of the US and Afghan timetables. In Washington, Karzai said that, even with the pledges of continuing American financial and other assistance after 2011, it would take until 2014 before Afghan government institutions could establish an effective presence throughout their country.
The issue of Karzai’s proposed peace plan attracted much interest at his joint public appearance with US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. The Afghan president had postponed convening the planned National Consultative Peace Jirga, which was to endorse his peace plan, until 29 May, allowing Karzai time to assess Washington’s response. Like Obama, Clinton offered conditional US backing for Karzai’s controversial proposal to reconcile with defecting Taliban leaders as well as rank-and-file fighters prepared to desert the Taliban movement. Although acknowledging the need for some kind of political tract to end the fighting, Clinton insisted that the candidates for either the reconciliation or the reintegration process must renounce violence, break with Al-Qaeda, and accept the laws of the current Afghan constitution, especially those promoting women’s rights.
Despite Karzai's well-managed visit, a major gap exists between the optimistic talk of politicians in Washington and what the US and British military report seeing in Afghanistan. These field commanders discern little enduring progress in eliminating the Taliban’s presence in key provinces or in developing the stronger Afghan military and political forces needed to sustain the Afghan government after the coalition completes its planned military withdrawal.
Richard Weitz - Senior Fellow and Director, Center for Political-Military Analysis at the Hudson Institute, Washington DC.
