Qatar Assistant Foreign Minister
Ali bin Fahd al-Hajri, right, and Taliban
official Jan
Mohammad Madani, attend an Ill-conceived ribbon cutting.
A series
of diplomatic blunders threatened to
derail any hope of peace
talks
between the Afghan government
of Hamid Karzai and the Taliban,
who opened an office in
Qatar
with all the hallmarks of a state
embassy.
America's Clueless Affront to President HamidKarzai (Le Figaro, France)
"This is a step backward for an imbroglio that combines the
hardness of the Taliban, the cunning of the Qataris, the cynicism of the
Americans and the sensitivity of the Afghans. ... If the Taliban and Qataris
had wanted to spit in the face of HamidKarzai, they need have done nothing differently. Then the
Americans, perhaps unwittingly, significantly worsened the insult."
The fury of Hamid Karzai: After the United States apparently permitted the Taliban, his staunchest enemies, to parade as the sovereign rulers of Afghanistan, Karzai flew into a justifiable rage.
President
HamidKarzai is a
distinguished Pashtun, cultured but undecided, who
the Americans called on in November 2001 to lead Afghanistan after they drove
out the Taliban thanks to the Tajik and Uzbek auxiliaries of the Northern
Alliance. This man, who speaks good English and dresses elegantly, has no
desire to play the fall guy, now that the Americans have grown weary of attempting
to pacify the “kingdom of insolence.” He doesn't feel the calling of a South Vietnamese
prime minister who, as 1974 became 1975, was abandoned by the
Americans as one discards a worn out mop. Those cold Washington bureaucrats
had just appeared to shunt Karzai aside from important talks with the
Taliban in Doha, when the Afghan leader rebuffed them by announcing,
through his spokesperson, that he was suspending ongoing negotiations with the
United States on drafting a bilateral security treaty.
This
is a step backward for an imbroglio that combines the hardness of the Taliban,
the cunning of the Qataris, the cynicism of the Americans and the sensitivity
of the Afghans. On June 15, Saturday, President Karzai
summoned all of these politicians and former warlords to his palace in the
capital Kabul, which is better guarded than any high-security prison. He was
given a blank check to ensure that Afghanistan would not oppose the opening of
an official Taliban office in Doha. It should be added that Afghanistan and
Qatar have normal diplomatic relations. In the mind of the Afghan president, it
is a question of beginning the process of peace talks in an environment not controlled
by its powerful Pakistani neighbor. Mullah Omar, who was head of the “Islamic
Emirate of Afghanistan” from 1996 to 2001 and remains the uncontested leader of
the Taliban, is today a refugee in a compound not far from the Pakistani city
of Quetta, where all visitors are properly screened by officers of the ISI (Inter Services Intelligence, the most powerful
Pakistani military intelligence service).
HamidKarzai, of
course, believed the Amer
icans and their Qatari allies would obligate the
Taliban, as a condition of opening their office, to respect the Afghan Constitution
and abjure violence.
Tuesday
morning saw a grand military ceremony in Kabul, with the secretary general of
NATO and the highest-ranking officers of the American, British and Afghan
militaries participating. NATO, which has waged the war as it saw fit in the
country since 2002, solemnly handed responsibility for the security of the area
to the Afghan army. This means that Western soldiers will no longer engage in
sweep operations, aerial bombardment or nocturnal helicopter-borne raids on
their own initiative. They will only fight in two situations: self-defense or
if the Afghan army requests their help as part of an operation. The symbolic
significance of this moving ceremony was unaffected by two incidents that Afghan
and Western officials would prefer to play down, namely, a failed car bomb
attack on Sheikh Mohaquik, leader of the Hazara community (Shiites scorned by the Taliban - who are
all Sunni Pashtuns - as heretics) and a rocket attack
on the Bagram Air base (with two Americans killed).
On
the same day, two different events provoked Karzai’s
fury. The first was the inauguration of the Taliban office in Doha, which the
Emir of Qatar didn't attend, but which was nonetheless televised and broadcast
on Al-Jazeera [watch below]. At the entrance to a large square villa was a
plaque proclaiming, in Arabic, “Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan,” and on the
roof flew the flag of the former Taliban state. If the Taliban and Qataris had
wanted to spit in the face of HamidKarzai, they need have done nothing differently. It is a
fact that for these Pashtun Islamists, Karzai is no more than a traitor, not even worthy of being
spoken to.
The Americans then, perhaps unwittingly, significantly worsened the insult to Karzai. They announced that their special envoy to AfPak (an American coined phrase to refer to Afghanistan
and Pakistan), diplomat James Dubbins, would fly out for
Doha the same evening, via Ankara. The Americans have just accorded the Taliban
the honor of talking with them as equals, even though the latter have neither
recognized the Afghan constitution nor abjured violence.
In
a statement written by Karzai in a cold rage on
Wednesday morning, the Afghan president denounced the Americans, whose “acts
contradict their words.” Up to now, Washington had always said that peace talks
must be between Afghans, but Karzai has demonstrated none
of the qualities of an Atatürk; he is not a man to let himself be pushed
around in the political arena. Karzai will not be
content with a vague piece of paper. As a first step, he will try and end the talks in
Doha, and then he will demand that the Americans maintain their military
presence at four enormous bases at the four corners of the country: Shindan (near Heart), Fort Bastion (in Helmand Province),
Kandahar and Bagram.
