Li'l Big Chief Has Lost His Sheep

Hamed Karzai, the chairman of Afghanistan's interim government, is every inch the leader the West invariably celebrates. He's only 44 years old, a veritable babe in this geriatric, uncouth world of patriarchs and cynical leaders; he's smooth and suave, his English is impeccable, and he enunciates every syllable in the manner of a citizen of the globe. Karzai is the kind of person who can hold his own anywhere, as a guest of honour during US President George W. Bush's state of the Union address, in his speech to the British cabinet. His elegant sartorial style leaves the haughty fashion houses breathless and gushing, and even inspires the normally phlegmatic Chinese president, Jiang Zemin, to compliment him on his wardrobe.

Karzai could easily be voted as the most surprising—and unusual—fashion icon of the new century. He is also, without doubt, the West's hope of restoring sanity to the beleaguered, war-ravaged landscape of Afghanistan, in rooting out terrorism and rendering the country safe again for footloose backpackers. Karzai seems just the man who can get the stoutest of hearts to flutter, the most unreasonable to see reason, the most obstinate to become amenable. You could call all these nature's gift, or the virtues the West wants to bestow on the man whose task it is to refashion Afghanistan, as some would say, in America's image.

Unfortunately for Karzai, a non-entity only two months back, his own countrymen don't seem to be listening to him. Nor are they enamoured of the person who wants to extricate the country from the cycle of war, poverty and diplomatic isolation. The more recalcitrant are even prepared to cock a snook at him—the warlords back in the provinces are flouting the orders from Kabul; the highway robbers have returned, and criminals have begun to operate in the cities with impunity.

Last week's bloody confrontation in the Paktia province was bad advertisement for Karzai. Kabul appointed Badshah Khan Zadran as governor of Paktia, only to find the local shura council under the leadership of Haji Saifullah opposing him bitterly. At the end of the ensuing conflict, the scorecard read: 50 dead, and Badshah Khan still nowhere near to occupying the exalted seat. A few days earlier, in Mazar-e-Sharif and Sholgara in the north, the troops of Uzbek warlord and deputy defence minister Abdul Rashid Dostum clashed with those of Tajik commander Mohammad Atta. The death toll: 40.

These internecine battles in Afghanistan must come as a grim reminder to Karzai about his earlier and equally grisly stint in Kabul, then as a lowly deputy foreign minister. But you can't blame the man whom circumstances propelled to the top post in the interim administration, cobbled together during the tortuous UN-sponsored Bonn Conference last November. Karzai wasn't the first choice of even deposed king Zahir Shah, whose delegation at the conference was the most influential, largely because the West backed him as its best bet in Afghanistan.

Shah preferred his former justice minister Abdul Sattar Seerat. Not only was Seerat considered more experienced in administrative matters, as an ethnic Uzbek his appointment could have gone a long way in dispelling the impression that Shah represented only his Pashtoon community and had no support among the country's ethnic minorities. In an informal poll the ex-king's 14-member council conducted among themselves, Seerat bagged 11 votes, Karzai only two, and Hidayat Amin Arsala, finance minister in the interim cabinet, just one.

But the Northern Alliance (NA) was quick to exercise its veto, emerging as it already had as the country's most dominant military force post-Taliban. The NA believed Seerat's candidature was a ploy to undermine its claims of representing the country's ethnic minorities.The NA then argued that the interim administration should have someone from Kandahar as its chief, both to wean away the Pashtoons from Mullah Omar and garner support for the deposed king. The US and its allies endorsed the idea.

Karzai's control over Kabul is precarious largely because of the compromise hammered out at Bonn. The NA conceded the office of chairman or prime minister of the interim government to Zahir Shah's camp but in the bargain secured 16 ministerial posts in the 30-member interim administration, including the defence portfolio for Mohammad Fahim Qasim, interior for Mohammad Yunus Qanuni and foreign affairs for Dr Abdullah Abdullah. The presence of Fahim's Tajik fighters and Qanuni's policemen have palpably constrained Karzai in Kabul. All this has an element of deja vu—the mujahideen government the Taliban had deposed too had been under the control of then defence minister Ahmad Shah Masood, Fahim's mentor.

No wonder, Karzai has been repeatedly calling for an extension in the six-month mandate of the British-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF). The ISAF and the US military presence are the only sources of support Karzai can depend upon to extend the government's writ to other provinces and curtail the power of the warlords. This is also precisely why the young leader favours augmentation in the ISAF's strength as well as its deployment in other parts of the country. Another Paktia isn't something Karzai can afford.

As the West mulls over these requests, and as the US prepares to play the Great Game of gas and oil in Central Asia, Karzai knows it is extremely difficult to restore peace to Afghanistan and win the accolades of his countrymen reeling under the might of obstreperous warlords and incorrigible criminals. Indeed, the only way the suave chairman of the interim administration can extend his tenure is to undertake trips abroad and employ his gift of the gab to impress the credulous West. And that's precisely what he has been concentrating upon—his first trip took him to Japan, China and Tajikistan; his second saw him touch base in Saudi Arabia, the US and the UK. On this count, at least, Karzai has been successful, winning encomiums from the press as well as his hosts.

The war in Afghanistan, in many ways, involved manipulation of TV images and deft public relations exercises. It seems no different in what is considered peace time. So pleased are the western powers with Karzai's performance that there is already talk of retaining him in his job in the transitional government that would be formed after the Loya Jirga is convened in June. Really, who cares about the Afghans and their dashed expectations, or that they consider Karzai to be the puppet of the US and its allies.

This, though, isn't to claim that there are no advantages in having Karzai at the helm. Hailing from the Durrani Pashtoon people that had provided kings to Afghanistan from 1747 until 1973, when Sardar Mohammad Daoud deposed his cousin-monarch Zahir Shah in a bloodless coup, Karzai's candidature was also strengthened because of his untainted past. In addition, his family is influential and respected in Kandahar province, a vital factor in allaying the fears of the majority Pashtoons that their interests would be sacrificed in an NA-dominated government. That he speaks both Pashto and Persian Dari, the two national languages of Afghanistan, was believed to be a factor that could bring together a fractured country.

Educated in Afghanistan and in Shimla, India, Karzai and his extended family migrated to Pakistan in the early '80s, after the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. Balochistan's capital Quetta then became his second home. Two of his brothers live in the US where they own Afghan restaurants.Karzai too had lived in the US for a while; his opponents, in fact, allege that he holds an American green card.

During his stay in Pakistan, Karzai was responsible for running the Peshawar office of Professor Sebghatullah Mojadeddi, who was then leading a moderate and nationalist mujahideen group in the battle against the Soviets in Afghanistan. Karzai was Mojadeddi's spokesman, known for deftly handling the media. When Mojadeddi became Afghanistan's president for two months in the first mujahideen government that was installed in Kabul, he appointed his suave spokesman as deputy foreign minister. Karzai continued to hold the post even after Prof Burhanuddin Rabbani succeeded Mojadeddi. His experience then is an important factor underlying his request for extending the ISAF's mandate and tenure. It was then Karzai learnt that the president of Afghanistan need not be the most powerful man, that those who command firepower call the shots. He couldn't have forgotten how then defence minister Ahmad Shah Masood's fighters turned back Mojadeddi who had arrived to deliver a TV and radio speech as the country's president.

Powerless and tired of the infighting among mujahideen that ruined Kabul and left nearly 50,000 dead, Karzai quit his largely ceremonial post. Initially, he supported the Taliban, who had emerged in Kandahar in late 1994, because they restored peace to his lawless native province. Some Taliban military commanders, including the late Herat governor Mulla Yar Mohammad, had an extremely good rapport with the influential Karzai family. His critics say Karzai had even toyed with the idea of taking a ministerial or ambassadorial job in the Taliban government but differences between the two sides scuppered the deal.

Karzai turned against the Taliban because of their refusal to soften their rigid policies and the harsh punishment they meted out to opponents. The final rupture occurred three years back when his father, Abdul Ahad Karzai, was murdered in Quetta. The guilty were never identified but the Karzais suspected the Taliban to have been the mastermind. From then till now, Hamed Karzai has indeed come a long way. What remains to be seen is where he goes from here: will he succeed in pulling out his country from the cycle of violence and destruction? Will he manage to funnel international assistance to rebuild Afghanistan? More important, will he win the confidence of his people?