"Partnerships"
Surprise! Hamid Karzai, you've had an unexpected visitor. You are joining the ranks of heads of state who have demonstrated the temerity to irritate the President of the United States. But President Obama came to you, he did not summons you to appear before his august presence.
Still, the message he brought was a rankling one, certainly. You and your administration are corrupt beyond wink-wink, you see. Bad enough the elections were tainted, but you still have not, and likely will not accede to international demands to cleanse yourself and your administration of endemic corruption.
Wait: you've still got a winning card, haven't you? The Americans and NATO and military representing the international community (read: Western interests) are there in your country because they think they must be, to protect themselves from further al-Qaeda incursions into their geographic spheres. They need you, as much as you need them.
But you won't be needing them too much longer, it would appear. Not with the way things have been going. Meetings with envoys of the Taliban, with envoys of important tribal chieftains with blood on their hands through their rapacious pasts. Make a deal, dismiss the NATO forces and all will be forgiven.
You have, after all, offered to share governance of your vast country with the Taliban, should they be willing to call quits to what is essentially for you a civil war. One that presents as a holding war against Islamist jihad, to the allied forces you have invited into Afghanistan. The forces of Islamist jihad allied with al-Qaeda, mortal enemy of the West.
The UN, NATO and the U.S. urged you to conduct a major overhaul of the electoral system, and you did. You will now yourself appoint all five members of the election complaint commission; so much for neutrality. Corruption remains happily pervasive, despite the population's fervent desire to have it reined in and for justice to prevail.
The culture that has so long dominated Afghanistan is there and there it will remain. And of course as soon as the Taliban return to the fold all the Western-built schools for girls will be destroyed. The clinics, the civil infrastructure may remain, under re-structured plans more reflective of Islamic sharia. No more poppy-growing interference. Women solidly encased in burqas as is right and fitting.
It's not hard to see why, since as you've said for years, Afghanistan must live with its neighbours. And if one of those neighbours just happens to be the most incendiarily-hateful enemy of the West, well so be it. NATO allies can empty their treasury on behalf of Afghanistan; worse, lose their native sons and daughters, but that's the way the world goes.
You and President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad make a jolly pair, exchanging state visits and no doubt laughing at the gullibility of the West, their willingness to make extreme sacrifices for a nation like yours which will take whatever it can before turning its back on its erstwhile supporters and defenders.
From a week-end of celebration in Tehran to an impromptu meeting with the President of the United States. Who does not take kindly to uppity juniors. Take it from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Oh, that was one of the ticklish topics of conversation you enjoyed with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad? Good for a belly-laugh between friends and allies.
And discussions of closer ties with China with its extremely useful investments in Iran and Afghanistan, now that security has been beefed up thanks to that foreign troop presence, soon to be dispensed with.
Labels: Conflict, Political Realities, United States
posted by Pieface @ Monday, March 29, 2010
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