The Obama Administration’s dysfunctional approach to dealing with Iran has many negative consequences for American foreign policy. Those negative consequences are particularly acute for American interests in Afghanistan. U.S. officials are beat a hasty retreat from President Obama’s ill-conceived dressing down of Afghan President Hamid Karzai during Obama’s March 28 stop in Kabul. Obama’s trip to Afghanistan touched off another firestorm of commentary about President Hamid Karzai’s worthiness as America’s “partner”.
But underlying Obama’s ineffective approach to Karzai—an approach tried previously and unsuccessfully by Vice President Biden and special envoy Richard Holbrooke—is a deeper strategic problem: America’s war against Al-Qa’ida and the Taliban in Afghanistan was not, is not, and will never be Karzai’s war. America’s only chance at success there is through a regional strategy for Afghanistan that would necessarily include an important role for Iran.
The United States went to war in Afghanistan in 2001 because Al-Qa’ida had used its sanctuary there to conceive and launch the 9/11 attacks. America’s goals were to punish and, to the extent possible, destroy Al-Qa’ida and its supporters there, and—for some but not all principals in the George W. Bush Administration—to prevent Afghanistan from again serving as a base for launching mass casualty terrorist attacks against the United States. Along with military action, both the George W. Bush Administration and the current Obama Administration have argued that achieving U.S. goals in Afghanistan requires a substantial effort at nation building there.
But Americans are hardly entitled to feel affronted when Karzai does not meet our expectations of him as our partner in Afghanistan—whether with regard to combating opium cultivation and trafficking, pursuing “good governance”, advancing women’s rights, or building a genuinely national Afghan army and national security apparatus. None of those things is a high priority for Karzai. Indeed, U.S. politicians and policymakers do not serve American interests when they not only indulge in public manifestations of dissatisfaction with Karzai over these issues, but let that disappointment actually shape U.S. policy.
Karzai was not selected by the United States and its international partners to serve as Afghanistan’s first post-Taliban president because he has any military background, management experience, or even significant government service. (Karzai served briefly as deputy foreign minister in the Islamist Rabbani government, before the Taliban captured Kabul and proclaimed themselves the government of Afghanistan.) Speaking from my own experience working on Afghan issues in the U.S. government during 2001-2003—first as political adviser to the U.S. Mission to the United Nations and then at the White House as the National Security Council’s Director for Afghanistan, Iran and Gulf Affairs—I can testify that Karzai was chosen as Afghanistan’s first post-Taliban president for three basic reasons.
First, the United States and its partners determined that it was useful to have an ethnic Pashtun occupy the presidency. Otherwise, significant parts of the Pashtun population—the largest single ethnic group in Afghanistan, representing 42 percent of the country’s population, and the Taliban’s social base—might revolt against a new political structure. As a non-Taliban Pashtun from an important tribe, Karzai met this criterion.
Second, the new Afghan president needed to be able to serve as a focal point for national reconciliation, to be achieved through carefully negotiated power-sharing arrangements encompassing the range of Afghanistan’s ethnic, sectarian, and tribal groups. Of the 30-odd ministers making up the post-Taliban government that emerged from the December 2001 Bonn conference, only one was selected because of plausible claims to technocratic expertise. Rather, ministers—including those responsible for the military and security forces—were appointed because of their ability to pacify their ethnic, sectarian, and tribal groups and bring them into the process of political reconstitution.
In this context, Karzai was selected as president because he was a prospectively conciliatory figure with assets that could be valuable for post-conflict stabilization. Though Pashtun, he could work constructively with representatives of non-Pashtun groups, including some of Afghanistan’s most powerful warlords. And, while he had supported the U.S. military campaign in 2001, he had not been an ardent Taliban foe. (In fact, Karzai had initially supported the Taliban after they came to power in 1994, because he believed they might be able to ameliorate Afghanistan’s profound disorder and lawlessness.)
Karzai got off to a reasonably good start during his first couple of years in office. But, from his perspective, the first priority in Afghanistan must be stopping the fighting among ethnic, sectarian, and tribal groups that has plagued the country for decades. For Karzai, this objective clearly trumps high priority items on America’s wish list for Afghanistan, such as “good governance” and “capacity building”. Moreover, by 2003, Karzai had recognized that stopping Afghanistan’s ongoing civil war would only happen through power-sharing on a national scale—power-sharing that would have to include the Taliban to be effective. This put Karzai even more profoundly at odds with Washington’s policy preferences. At the same time, America’s military efforts in Afghanistan began prompting an increasingly severe local backlash against what was perceived as a never-ending U.S. occupation—for which Karzai was seen as the primary “lackey”—that has consistently generated unacceptably high civilian casualties.
Because of this impasse, neither Karzai nor Washington has been able to achieve much of what each most wants—and the Taliban have been able to reassert their influence and gain control over ever greater portions of territory. From his first day in office, Karzai has never had control over any of his ministers, let alone over a single Afghan soldier, police officer, or government bureaucrat. Nevertheless, both the George W. Bush Administration and the current Obama Administration have regularly succumbed to the temptation to dump on Karzai for failing to do things he sees as harmful to national reconciliation through power sharing, such as fighting the Taliban and pursuing “good governance”.
Senior U.S. commanders acknowledge there is no purely military solution in Afghanistan. President Obama has indicated that America’s military commitment there is not open-ended. But, if the United States is to withdraw military forces from Afghanistan over the next several years, the Obama Administration needs to embrace precisely what Karzai can offer—national reconciliation through negotiated power-sharing arrangements—and set aside the delusion that Afghanistan can be “stabilized” through domestic transformation along Western lines.
This would mean supporting Karzai in pursuing his most urgent challenge—bringing the Taliban to the negotiating table with other Afghan factions while keeping the most strongly anti-Taliban elements at the table, too. That requires a serious diplomatic strategy to elicit the cooperation of Afghan factions’ most important external backers. Washington should be supporting Karzai’s efforts to reach out to Saudi Arabia, which has longstanding ties to the Taliban, to enlist their help in incentivizing the Talban’s cooperation.
But, Iran’s role is especially critical in defining and implementing a serious regional strategy for Afghanistan. As I have testified from own experience in government service, Tehran provided essential support for standing up a post-Taliban government in 2001-2002. If there is to be a stable political settlement in Afghanistan, Iran’s contributions will once again be indispensible. Rather than criticizing Karzai for building a constructive relationship with Iran, Washington should be supporting his efforts to reach out to Tehran. This is essential if Iran is to be persuaded to accept the Taliban’s inclusion in a political settlement, while, at the same time, using Afghan groups to which Iran has ties as a long-term check on the extent of the Taliban’s power and reach.
Hamid Karzai remains a potentially valuable partner—but only if Washington pursues a realistic strategy in Afghanistan.
–Hillary Mann Leverett
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/South_Asia/LD17Df01.html
thanks for the link, David Sheegog.
Stephen Sniegoski discovered this dissonance between Washington Post reporting vs editorializing on the Chas Freeman dis-appointment:
http://www.thornwalker.com/ditch/sniegoski_freeman_03_09.htm
Eric – re. your link to Antwerp train station. I thought I was in Brussels at the time, but I’m sure the old, unshaven bloke on the left holding a brown paper bag with a bottle of vodka in it is me.
David Sheegog
Thanks for the link, http://www.mepc.org/whats/cwf032410.asp
I agree, Its a terrific read.
Freeman’s remark on Israel lobby
Freeman then issued a full statement on his reasons for withdrawal, stating,
“I do not believe the National Intelligence Council could function effectively while its chair was under constant attack by unscrupulous people with a passionate attachment to the views of a political faction in a foreign country;”
he identified the country as Israel.
He questioned whether the “outrageous agitation” following the leak of his pending appointment meant that the Obama administration would be able to make independent decisions “about the Middle East and related issues.”
He cited especially interference by Israel supporters, writing:
“The libels on me and their easily traceable email trails show conclusively that there is a powerful lobby determined to prevent any view other than its own from being aired.
The tactics of the Israel lobby plumb the depths of dishonour and indecency and include character assassination, selective misquotation, the wilful distortion of the record, the fabrication of falsehoods, and an utter disregard for the truth.”…..
“The aim of this lobby is control of the policy process through the exercise of a veto over the appointment of people who dispute the wisdom of its views, the substitution of political correctness for analysis, and the exclusion of any and all options for decision by Americans and our government other than those that it favours.” ”
—Charles W. Freeman]
After his withdrawal Freeman gave an interview to Robert Dreyfuss in The Nation saying he regretted he did not identify his attackers as “right-wing Likud in Israel and its fanatic supporters here,” what he called the “(Avigdor) Lieberman lobby.”
He also said that if President Obama had stepped in earlier he might have deflected attacks by Democrats, but that he and the National Intelligence Council still “would have been subjected to a slanderous attack.”
He said these attacks were as the “Chinese say, killing a chicken to scare the monkeys,” to dissuade other critics of Israel from accepting government positions, but he had received messages from a number of Jews who also disagreed with Israel’s policies
So basically the Israeli ball-and-chain around the US neck prevent the US from adopting policies that would best serve US interests. So what else is new?
James Canning
you are making a valid point in your post addressed to rehmat;
“If Iran did not support the Palestinians, Syria, and Lebanon, and instead allowed the Zionist project to continue unimpeded, Israel would not be making so many hostile noises. Iran clearly is not a military threat to Israel, but Iran most definitely is a mortal threat to the insane “Greater Israel” project.”
also great article by Rehmat
David,
Bravo! Charles Freeman’s comments merit the widest possible distribution. Indeed, a foolish narrative has taken hold, that “victory” over the Soviet Union in the Cold War was achieved by idiotic levels of “defense” spending and a willingness to confront “evil”. The US inflicts grievous financial damage on itself with the perverse squandering of trillions of dollars on useless or unnecessary weapons. All the whores serving the armaments manufacturers explain this state of affairs.
Sorry, Ambassador Chas Freeman’s speech on what’s wrong with US foreign policy was not covered in this blog, I found it on Le Speakeasy. Its a terrific read.
http://www.mepc.org/whats/cwf032410.asp
I’d still like to know what the third reason is. Or did I miss something?
This is confirmation from Hillary that Iran wants to and should play baraadar bozorg (big brother, no, not 1984) in its own neighborhood. All roads go through Iran. Well done indeed!
Very much off-topic, but maybe we all need that now and then. If you haven’t seen this video, and need some cheering up:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7EYAUazLI9k
Dan Cooper,
Should Ahmadinejad be regarded as the hero of the American taxpayers? The idiotic squandering of hundreds of billions of dollars each year would be avoidable, if the US had normal relations with Iran. And I think Iran would accept the US bases in Qatar. The military adventure in Iraq should have been terminated by now, and the continuing adventure in Afghanistan will fail if the US continues its foolish effort to isolate Iran.
Rehmat,
Excellent post, but I would suggest Israel does not so much regard Iran as a rival in the Middle East but as the “fly in the ointment” preventing a thorough suppression of Palestinian nationalism, and concurrent intimidation of Syria, that are needed to accomplish the insane “Greater Israel” scheme. If Iran did not support the Palestinians, Syria, and Lebanon, and instead allowed the Zionist project to continue unimpeded, Israel would not be making so many hostile noises. Iran clearly is not a military threat to Israel, but Iran most definitely is a mortal threat to the insane “Greater Israel” project.
Bravo! Obviously Iran is an essential component of the effort to achieve minimum stability in Afghanistan. Hillary Clinton and Bob Gates refuse to acknowledge this fact. Either they both totally lack the strategic vision necessary to do their jobs properly, or they believe that pandering to the Israel lobby and the warmongers is the best way to advance their own interests while continuing to serve in their present positions.
Fiorangela,
I think this speech of Charles Freeman, has been commented on before, but the answer to your question, is explained by Freeman quite well.
http://www.mepc.org/whats/cwf032410.asp
Fiorangela,
“Is there one, just one, rational, coherent mind such as Hillary Mann Leverett’s, who is advising United States policy makers on how to craft US relations with Iran so that the US can assume a place in the window of the world that aligns US values and interests in an aesthetic and ethically pleasing manner?”
Great post, Fiorangela. Unfortunately, Hillary has been taken away from the US policy makers. Maybe that’s why Obama is screwing things up so far.
“Karzai was chosen … for three basic reasons.” And the third reason was…Unocal?
Architecture tells us something about a people and culture. Many of Iran’s monumental buildings (shrines, mosques, fine old mansions and museums)boast intricately pieced windows, as complex and graceful as handmade lace, lace formed from precisely cut and arranged pieces of wood. Design features that appear to be circles are formed by carefully joining precisely cut straight lengths of wood.
I took dozens of photos of these windows, and their intricacy and precision came to mind as I listened to Elizabeth Warren testify to a US Senate banking committee that the US economic crisis was caused, in part, by a systemic “misalignment” of incentives in the control structures of US financial institutions.
If one tiny element of a window in Iran is “misaligned,” the entire composition fails; it will not serve its purpose, whether aesthetic or functional.
Alebra, “the alignment of the bones,” according to the flyleaf of my ninth-grade textbook, was invented by ancient Persians. Balanced alignment is as much an aesthetic as a habit of mind for Iranians, whose daily lives are carried out in everyday communication with their ancient monuments and poets. The relationship of Iranians to their land and the built and written embodiments of their history is natural and automatic in a way that an American eye and mind habituated to golden arches and talk radio cannot conceive.
Nothing that emerges from the Obama administration reflects that anyone in the administration is applying anything other than a golden arches eye and a Luntzed vocabulary — two franchises committed to the lowest common denominator — to the calculus of US-Iran-Afghanistan relations. It is therefore no surprise that the structure of that relationship is a jumbled window of misaligned bits and crudely cut pieces, cobbled together with the leadership of a warrior –David Petraeus– whose life’s training has been in ways to kill and destroy rather than to create and build.
Is there one, just one, rational, coherent mind such as Hillary Mann Leverett’s, who is advising United States policy makers on how to craft US relations with Iran so that the US can assume a place in the window of the world that aligns US values and interests in an aesthetic and ethically pleasing manner?
How ironic, the Muslim leader despised the most by the Zionist Occupied Governments (ZOGs) in the West and the East – has become one of the most welcome world leader in the American-Jewish occupied countries, such as Iraq, Afghanistan, Lebanon and Palestine. In March 2008 Dr. Ahmadinejad received a hero’s welcome in occupied Baghdad, which put all Bush’s Iraqi visits to shame. Dr. Ahmadinejad drove in an open car through the streets of Baghdad without bodyguards – an act which no American president would ever dare to perform. For the leaders of Islamic Resistance leaders in Lebanon and Gaza, Tehran has become what is Israel to the majority of American politicians. On Wednesday, Ahmadinejad arrived in Kabul for the first time since the re-election of American puppet, Hamid Karzai, in an ‘American-style” democratic election. Incidently, Zionist US defense secretary, Robert Gates, is also in the NATO military base on the outskirts of Kabul at the same time. Gates is there on US-NATO’s last effort to see how 150,000-strong foreign forces can stop Taliban’s increasing victories. Dr. Ahmadinejad’s first visit to Kabul as President of Islamic Republic of Iran was in August 2007 which ruffled US feathers.
In a press conference sitting next to his Afghan host Hamid Karzai, Dr. ahmadinejad mocked Robert Gates’ comment about Tehran’s support for Taliban by saying that it’s United States which is playing a “double game” by fighting the the same “terrorists” it supported in the past. Both leaders said the Afghanistan and Iran were “brother nations” that have the same national interests and historical cultural links”. Afghanistan, India, Pakistan and Bangladesh has been ruled by the Persian dynasties in the past.
Both Afghan president Hamid Karzai and Pakistan president Asif Ali Zardari has visited Tehran in the past more often than they have visited their sponsors in Washington. Ahmadinejad has spoken against the foreign forces in neighboring Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan, which have not only destablized the region but also pose a great threat to Iran’s national security on behalf of Israel.
Since the American occupation of Afghanistan in December 2001 – Tehran has poured more than US$500 million for the reconstruction of Afghan infrastructure destroyed during the Russian and American wars on the country. Iran’s major headache is opium smuggling from Afghanistan which has jumped from 178 tons per year under Taliban rule to 4,000 tons per year under US occupation. Although Iran has won the praise of UN for its strenous efforts in fighting drug trafficking, its long border with Afghanistan provides an attractive route for drug-smuggling to Europe and the US.
Christopher Walker had reported in the TIMES magazine (June 19, 1998) that Israel had established links with the Mujahideen fighting Russian forces in 1991 and later with Talban. Eytan Bentsur, the director general of Israeli foreign ministry at that time confirmed that initial contacts had taken place beyween the Israeli diplomats and respresentatives of the Afghan rivals with the purpose of forging diplomatic ties regardless of which faction retain control of Kabul. The main purpose of Israel’s efforts to establish an intelligence network in Afghanistan in order to destablize neighboring Islamic Iran which Tel Aviv considers its arch-rival in the Middle East. Now the American occupied Afghanistan has provided a golden opportunity for Mossad to destablize all three Muslim countires (Pakistan, Islamic Iran and Afghanistan) with the help of CIA, Indian RAW and US-created Afghan intelligence RAMA.
http://rehmat1.wordpress.com/2010/03/11/ahmadinejad-ruffles-us-feathers-in-kabul/
“Today, our armed forces have so much power that no enemy will harbor evil thoughts about laying its hands on Iranian territory,” Ahmadinejad said at the parade marking National Army Day. The speech was broadcast live on state TV, which also showed segments of the parade.
Ahmadinejad urged the US to stop supporting Israel and to dismantle the American military presence in the Middle East and Afghanistan.
Tehran sees American troops on its doorstep in Iraq, Afghanistan and the Persian Gulf as a threat, and Ahmadinejad reiterated his allegations that the US presence is the source of the region’s instability.
“They have to leave our region. This is not a request; it is an order from the nations of the region.
It is the will of the regional nations,” Ahmadinejad said. “If they are interested in helping the security of the region, they have to dismantle their military presence in the region and stop supporting Israel.”
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3877827,00.html