UPI : Analysis: Karzai over optimistic

Analysis: Karzai over optimistic

By JACOB RUSSELL | UPI Correspondent | September 29, 2006

WASHINGTON, Sept. 29 (UPI) -- Afghanistan's President Hamid Karzai, handpicked by Bush in December 2001, painted an optimistic picture of Afghanistan in five years in a speech at a Washington think tank, raising the eyebrows of several critics.

Karzai, speaking at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, said the way forward is to remove the need for groups, organizations, and all state entities relying on religious radicalism as instruments of policy.

"He was even induced to give Bush political support on Iraq," said Marvin Weinbaum, a scholar-in-residence at the Middle East Institute who was just in Pakistan earlier in the week.

"Has the exercise of the use of radicalism as instruments of policy ended by intervention in Afghanistan? Or is that exercise still continuing? I would tell you it is still continuing," he said.

Karzai urged a more effective fight against terrorism.

"We as societies and those who act on our behalf -- the governments -- must make sure that no entity in that part of the world relies on radicalism as an instrument of policy," he said. "In order for us to be safe, we must bring ourselves to an end of this reign and if we do not, we will continue to suffer."

When questioned about the dominating presence of warlords and Taliban groups in Afghanistan, Karzai said that there were no warlords in control of any town, and that that was the case four years ago.

According to Karzai, Afghanistan has now established governors and district chiefs appointed by his signature in those places. He admitted that some of those district chiefs were bad, but he assured the committee that he can remove them and replace them at any time.

The truth, according to Weinbaum, is that the warlord problem is still very much alive. President Karzai has had to make appointments of local authority figures who are, in Weinbaum's words, "basically warlords," because the central government doesn't have the strength to exert its authority. Some of these "warlords" aren't bad, Weinbaum said.

"Marvin's right," Dr. Larry P. Goodson, professor of Middle East Studies and the General Dwight D. Eisenhower Chair of National Security, said. "Ethnic Afghans might say, 'Why do you always call them warlords? They're ethnic community leaders.' Yeah, you could call them that, but they are also warlords. They get their power from having control over armed men."

He added, "Karzai is not entirely incorrect." What Karzai can do, he explained, and what he has been successful doing, is to move warlords around to disconnect them from their sources of income.

"Karzai has tried to push a technocratic cabinet to put highly qualified people in places while keeping the warlords on the sideline," Goodson said. "The warlords, however, have a lot of local support, so there's a tension between Karzai with a Westernized background returning to Afghanistan and the warlords who have blood on their hands but can legitimately say they've been there all along."

Karzai wants to replace the warlords with highly educated and skilled politicians who have made their place in the United States, Goodson said. The locals perceive these officials as carpetbaggers. "That's a very loaded term," he added, "but I am using it purposely."

Presently, the central government is turning to the local militia to work as a police force in order to arrest the momentum that Taliban has had, Weinbaum said. This further displays Afghan dependence on a militia that they claim is authorized and not under control.

President Karzai made the situation in Afghanistan sound optimistic. According to him, the real problem was four years ago with warlords, but it is now under control. "We've disarmed thousands of people," he said.

"He's putting the best face on it," Goodson said.

The disarming of thousands, according to Weinbaum, mostly took place in the north -- outside of the areas that were most contentious. All of the big warlords were disarmed, he said, but not the tens of thousands of militia "sub-commanders" who have the greatest influence over these towns.

Instead, they are rearming these militias they were once so anxious to get rid of.

"It's a problem," Goodson said. "It's sort of a 'damned if you do, damned if you don't' situation. If you don't turn to warlords, then you don't have the ground strength to push back the Taliban, but if you do, then you undermine the whole success of disarmament, demobilization, and reintegration."

The problem is very serious and unfortunate. The continuation of trouble in Afghanistan will increase Afghan taxes, the cross-war activities, the loss of foot-war soldiers, the loss of women and children, the burning of schools and the burning of mosques, according to President Karzai.

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