Afghanistan is going down the toilet. Karzai knows it, NATO knows it, Bush denies it.
Germany is sending more Special Forces now and Britain is planing for an emergency deployment of an additional 5,500 soldiers to Afghanistan (to be pulled from Iraq).
So today the mayor of Kabul is visiting the United States.
His requests:
– more control over what U.S. forces are doing in Afghanistan and
– more economic help for eradicating opium production.
But he is not meeting friends.
Yesterday’s Observer picked the central point:
.. he will ask America for the return of Afghan prisoners and ultimate control over US military operations.
…
That is unlikely. The US sees Afghanistan and the search for Osama bin Laden, who is believed to be in the border areas of Pakistan, as central to its self-proclaimed war on terror. In fact, America is keen to establish permanent military bases on Afghan soil, which could undermine Karzai’s authority and be hugely unpopular with many Afghans.
Two days before Karzai arrived in Washington the State Department leaked to the New York Times:
United States officials warned this month in an internal memo that an American-financed poppy eradication program aimed at curtailing Afghanistan’s huge heroin trade had been ineffective, in part because President Hamid Karzai
Karzai’s answer:
"The Afghan people have done their job. Now the international community must come and provide alternative livelihood to the Afghan people, which they have not done so far."
The poppies production is of course undermining the state. But eradicating it by spraying the crops and those who grow them, like the U.S. would like to do, will undermine the state even more. Last November reports about spraying and spraying casualties popped up, but the U.S. and Britain denied, implausible, any responsibility.
Bush today also denied Karzai any right to restrict U.S. military action. So what is that poor guy to do?
Karzai denies article prompted riots
"These demonstrations were in reality not related to the Newsweek story, "he said at a joint press conference held after a meeting with President George W. Bush. ..
His comments contrast with those of White House officials who have forcefully condemned the Newsweek report that claimed a Koran had been flushed down a toilet by interrogators in Guantanamo Bay, and have suggested it helped trigger the riots.
Now Karzai and Bush pick on each other, the later denying the former any of the standing he needs to keep the little authority he has, while Afghanistan retards into a narco state and the Taliban are victorious enough to entice emergency moves in London and Berlin.
Prediction: A year from now, Karzai will neither live in Washington nor in Kabul.