A windfall Afghan exit strategy for Obama

Karzai is offering Obama an exit strategy

by M K Bhadrakumar

The tough-talking, no-nonsense US National Security Advisor Susan Rice met her match at the presidential palace in Kabul Monday evening over a “working dinner”. One would have loved to be a fly on the wall. But there was no need, because no sooner than the pomegranates and grapes were eaten after the rich meal of pilav and kebabs and Rice reported back to Washington her conversation with President Hamid Karzai, which lasted several hours, the White house released a curtly worded readout on what transpired. 

In sum, the readout makes it clear that President Barack Obama expects Karzai to back off from his pre-conditions for signing the status of forces agreement (known as the Bilateral Security Agreement or BSA.) 

Karzai’s spokesman Aimal Faizi, who was present at the dinner, later went public with a candid media briefing. He disclosed that there were heated exchanges.  Faizi said the American ambassador James Cunningham “made the President very angry; his reaction was strong and intense.” 

The argument arose over Karzai’s new precondition that the Obama administration should release all the Afghan prisoners at Guantanamo Bay (estimated to number 20 Taliban leaders). Cunningham tried to explain that the US domestic laws prevail over Guantanamo prisoners. 

Hmmm. Faizi added that Karzai’s strongest language was reserved for another exchange with Rice herself when he pressed that American counterterrorism raids on Afghan private homes should forthwith cease (which are the sole combat activity undertaken nowadays by American troops with the drones silently bearing the main burden of the war). 

Faizi said, ” The president insisted on the stance; a total ban on home raids since yesterday. He assured Madame Rice they will get the BSA signed — you will get a BSA signed, but give the Afghan people the time to see that the US has changed its behavior, that home raids are banned in practical terms.”

From the White House readout, it appears that a point of no return is reaching. Karzai wanted Rice to report to Obama and then come back to him for more talks, but the readout doesn’t leave the door open. Indeed, the wording suggests Rice was in her elements too — even underscoring that Karzai was out of touch with the “overwhelming and moving support” that the Afghan people have voiced for the BSA.

Most important, Rice imposed an ultimatum that “without a prompt signature” by Karzai on the dotted line on the BSA document, Obama “would have no choice but to initiate planning for a post-2014 future in which there would be no US or NATO troop presence in Afghanistan.” Put differently, Obama would exercise the so-called “zero option.” But Karzai didn’t budge. The readout says, “In response, President Karzai outlined new conditions for signing the agreement and indicated he is not prepared to sign the BSA promptly.”  

The intriguing thing is that the readout leaves no escape hatch for Karzai, either. That, in turn, holds the dicey potential that an eyeball-to-eyeball may ensue between Obama and Karzai — unless state secretary John Kerry makes yet another quick dash to Kabul. But then, once bitten, twice shy. Arguably, Obama would sense the danger that all this is foreplay and Karzai could be preparing to do a “Nouri al-Maliki” on him — and that is something he can ill-afford in the Washington political circuit today.

What matters critically, however, is Karzai’s calculus. Certainly, his last-minute announcement that he would leave it to his successor to sign the BSA took the US by surprise, as admitted, here, by none other than the US special representative James Dobbins over the weekend. That is to say, Karzai would have anticipated Rice would probably come with the diktat, ‘Sign, or else.’ (By the way, the visit was at Karzai’s invitation.) 

So, he presumably kept a wish list of “preconditions”  for signing the BSA– termination of the US military raids of Afghan homes, release of Guantanamo Bay detainees, commencement of immediate peace talks by the US with the Taliban, inclusion of Bamyan in the list of the US-NATO military bases, and firm US assurance of non-interference in the forthcoming Afghan presidential election on April 5. 

Karzai apparently told Rice that Washington can’t cherry pick — it is either all, or nothing. One way of looking at the bizarre setting is that Karzai resorted to the Afghan bazaar instinct of striking a deal after a terrific spell of bargaining. But then, Rice has never been to the Afghan bazaar. 

Where does that leave things? Indeed, Karzai is a mercurial personality and may yet blink. But it is becoming increasingly improbable by the hour, because it is just not manly to be seen in the bazaar as being browbeaten by an alien — and a lady at that. It won’t do good to his image and legacy. Karzai is a blue-blooded aristocrat — and a Popalzai. 

To be sure, there are some missing links here. What emerges is that after agonizing over the issues for days — perhaps, sleepless nights, too — Karzai deep down feels uncomfortable with the prospect of being seen by the Pashtuns as the American puppet who facilitated the long term occupation of his country. 

Woven into this is also the mortal fear that once he signs the BSA, Americans being Americans, they may leave him to the wolves. Karzai would know the US is determined to have a new president in Kabul who is malleable, which means the US embassy in the Afghan capital is sure to manipulate the outcome of the upcoming election. 

Whereas, although he would cease to be the president, Karzai hopes to remain a “stakeholder” in any new political dispensation that replaces him. Simply put, that’s the way things always worked in Kabul. That’s the logic of power transitions in Afghanistan — which is why there have seldom been any peaceful “transition” of power in the country’s history. 

Suffice to say, there is a fundamental divergence in the objectives that Obama and Karzai are pursuing, which is difficult to bridge, especially  when the White House is inundated with problems and crises — Iran and the Jewish lobby, Benjamin Netanyahu and the Saudi princes, the inscrutable Chinese Dream, Geneva 2 on Syria in mid-January, Libya descending into anarchic civil war at Europe’s doorsteps, the tough generals on the Nile, and so on. 

Of course, if Obama in the audacity of hope ever really harbored a secret wish for an Iraq-like “zero-option” in Afghanistan, this is the moment to grab it. Karzai is offering him an exit strategy.