Afghan President Hamid Karzai's Fortunes May Be Fading

[Turborama]

Published 2 hours ago, by Joan Firstenberg

He was once hailed at the great hope for Afghanistan. Hamid Karzai, the man known for his flowing capes and dark grey fez, sees his political fortunes crumble as the Obama Administration takes a fresh look at the situation in his country.

Last February, Joseph R. Biden, Jr, then a senator, sat down to a formal dinner at Afghanistan's Presidential Palace with President Hamid Karzai. As they were served a meal of lamb and rice, Mr. Biden and two other American senators asked Mr. Karzai about the corruption in his government, which is believed to be among the worst in the world. Karzai assured Biden and the other senators that there just was no corruption, and even if there was, it was not his fault. The senators were astonished, and after 45 minutes or so, Mr. Biden threw down his napkin and stood up, announcing.....

“This dinner is over,”

And the three senators walked out, long before they were supposed to.

Fast forward to today. Mr. Biden is now the U.S. Vice-President. And the President of the U.S., Barack Obama says he regards Mr. Karzai as unreliable and ineffective. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton says he presides over a “narco-state.” And the Americans making Afghan policy, who worry that the war is being lost, are vowing to bypass Mr. Karzai and deal directly with governors in the Afghan countryside.

This change is likely a hard pill for Mr. Karzai to swallow. During the Bush Administration, he was a White House favorite, a kind of celebrity in flowing cape and dark gray fez for the seven years that he this country since the fall of the Taliban.

But now, in his own home, Karzai faces a growing insurgency and a population that blames him for the country's abysmal economy and corrupt officials that seem to be present at every doorway of his government. The picture of his face, which once appeared on the walls of tea shops everywhere, are today much less visible.

Afghanistan will hold its elections in August. Mr. Karzai says he's looking for another five-year term. But in a poll commissioned by a group of private Afghans, 85 percent of those surveyed said they intended to vote for someone other than Mr. Karzai.

The Obama administration is now deciding what it wants from Mr. Karzai, and if he fits into the plan to reverse the course of the war in Afghanistan. Some say, Mr. Obama may decide he doesn't want Karzai at all. With the insurgency rising, corruption soaring and opium blooming across the land, it perhaps is not surprising that so many Afghans, and so many in Washington, see President Karzai’s removal as a precondition for changing the course of Afghanistan's history.

Abdullah, a former foreign minister in Mr. Karzai's government, who is now considering challenging him for president says,

“Under President Karzai, we have gone from a better situation to a good situation to a not-so-bad situation to a bad situation and now are going to worse. That is the trend. So let us say Karzai stays in power through the summer and that nothing serious happens and then he wins re-election. Then there will be two scenarios, and only two -- a rapid collapse or a slow unraveling.”

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[Idealism]

1. Karzai is a sympton of the problem, but not the affliction himself

He surely looks the other way for many illegal and immoral things, but it is drug lords and generals that run Afghanistan truly. Karzai's brother is a bigger cause of this than Karzai himself is.