Almost the Worst

The population of Afghanistan has a life expectancy well under 50 years, an infant mortality rate in 103 per 1000 live births, and literacy hovers at 18.2%. Women’s rights are near the bottom of all countries on the planet, and the government, the very form of government that our military victory imposed on this rugged and isolated land, is now ranked by Transparency.org as the third most corrupt nation on earth. Official lying, bribery, cronyism, ownership and control of prize assets and right to natural resources are allocated to high level government officials, their families and friends.

Afghan President Hamid Karzai – the global poster boy for government corruption – is termed out. He’s negotiating with the United States over any continuing American role in this terrorist training ground. U.S. President Barack Obama and Karzai truly despise each other. Although logically, we should have withdrawn from supporting this corrupt government a long time ago, we are still trying to establish a continuing presence after out long-term military invasion is being phased out. We lost whatever strategic advantage we might have had after throwing out the Taliban “way back when” we diverted our occupying forces to the bogus war in Iraq.

U.S. concerns today are more about managing the Taliban and their expansionist policies into neighboring Pakistan, a nation with a history of spreading nuclear weapons knowledge to regional terrorist states (Iran and North Korea) and more nuclear warheads than it could possibly need under any circumstances. When we leave Afghanistan, it becomes a safe haven for the Taliban who are also attacking in Pakistan, and there is the core of our desire to maintain that continuing presence.

There will be another election in Afghanistan in a few months, but the system of corruption and cronyism is so embedded in the government we imposed on this country that it is merely a change to another leader who will likely systematically continue the corruption that defines this government. But the negotiations with Karzai are nasty, filled with his accusations against and outrageous demands of the United States. Why has the man who owes his very power to the United States, who lived for many years in the U.S., become so vituperatively anti-American?

This “democratically” elected government – interesting concept in a country with an extremely isolated and illiterate constituency – controls little more than the capital city of Kabul and its environs, with occasional military forays into the countryside where they achieve temporary control, until the troops have to move on to cover another chaotic hotspot. Warlords are solidifying control over their regional turf, and Taliban operatives – al Qaeda’s brothers in terrorism – are reasserting their power wherever they can.

With NATO forces removing any significant military power, with defense currently relegated to Afghan troops operating on their own, Karzai and the crony-heirs-apparent have realized that to have any ability to remain in any position of power anywhere, they are going to have to work a modus vivendi with their traditional enemies, particularly the Taliban with forces all across the country. And you don’t win any favors from the Taliban by agreeing with American policies to limit and eradicate them. On the other hand, does the incumbent Kabul government even have enough power to sustain their control of even this region without NATO support? Karzai does appear to believe NATO is no longer relevant to his ambitions.

The Taliban have been spreading half-truths mixed with lies and mythology to turn as many Afghans against any government that has a strong link with the United States. They don’t want American forces to have launching platforms for drone strikes, the ability to observe and infiltrate Taliban regional strongholds or any other mechanism to contain and control the Taliban’s regional ambitions. But now the Karzai government has joined this policy of creating anti-American lies.

“It was the kind of dossier that the Taliban often publish, purporting to show the carnage inflicted during a raid by American forces: photographs of shattered houses and bloodied, broken bodies, and video images of anguish at a village funeral, all with gut-churning impact and no proof of authenticity.

“But this time, it was the government of President Hamid Karzai that was handing out the inflammatory dossier, the product of a commission’s investigation into airstrikes on Jan. 15 on a remote village and the supposed American cover-up that followed.

“In an apparent effort to demonize their American backers, a coterie of Afghan officials appears to have crossed a line that deeply troubles Western officials here: They falsely represented at least some of the evidence in the dossier, and distributed other material whose provenance, at best, could not be determined.” New York Times, January 25^th. Currying favor with the Taliban? It tells you everything you need to know about the government we literally put into office.

Fearing for a transfer of nuclear weapons in a Taliban-controlled or influenced Pakistan is a legitimate concern. Do we stop negotiating with a completely antagonistic Karzai or wait a few months for the next president who might just have a little less hatred for us? Can we undermine the Taliban efforts in Pakistan in any other way or have we boxed ourselves into an unsolvable if critical corner that requires groveling before a government that is everything American democracy is supposed to be against? What are your thoughts?

I’m Peter Dekom, and the United States’ deep lack of understanding of the profound differences of other cultures often results in decades of horrific unintended consequences.