The victory of Hamid Karzai in the Afghan presidential election is a watershed event. Mr. Karzai showed the door to western sponsors who approached him for a last-minute “deal” to scrap the runoff by having his opponent Abdullah Abdullah, former Foreign Minister, accommodated in some position in the future administration. Mr. Karzai refused to deal and instead chose to call the West’s bluff, which left the latter with no option but to back off. Mr. Abdullah too abdicated from the political scene, making the runoff redundant. In short, Mr. Karzai chose to “Afghanise” his power base, ignoring western protestations. He calculated that he would continue to enjoy strong support from within the major non-Pashtun groups as well so long as his partnership with Mohammed Fahim, Karim Khalili, Ismail Khan, Rashid Dostum and Mohammed Mohaqiq remained intact.
No doubt, a new power alignment is taking shape. Afghan-style politics is resuming after very many years. At the centre stage of the political theatre stands Mr. Karzai. He has turned the table squarely on the western powers. But he will not easily forget the sustained attempts over the past year and more to ridicule him and pull him down. There has been some attrition. The attacks on him and his family members have been on very personal terms at times. Afghans are not used to western-style character assassination in the name of democracy.
The latest broadside in the New York Times portraying his brother Wali Karzai as a drug trafficker and CIA agent has taken matters to a point of no return. The American officials who spoke out of turn have done colossal damage to the U.S. interests in Afghanistan. Washington must seriously note that the response to the New York Times report has come from none other than the Afghan Minister of Counter Narcotics, General Khodaidad Khodaidad. The Minister has brought on to public debate Afghanistan’s best-kept secret: the role of foreign troops in drug-trafficking.
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