The government of Afghanistan’s overweening enthusiasm to see the end of the presence of foreign troops is overflowing. President Hamid Karzai leads the charge by putting the Americans under great pressure inorder to extract as much as possible out of the prospective strategic deal with the U.S. What has further contributed to the state of impasse is the ruling team's internal rifts and ideological clashes.
Having been known for long, these rifts have now flowed to the surface. For Americans, the vision of a pliant and cooperative Hamid Karzai has long been shattered. For them dealing with him and the team around him has been increasingly difficult with covert and overt forces out to sabotage and discredit the Americans.
Compared to Iraq, Afghanistan has been a much tougher deal for the U.S. Right now, the U.S. and the Afghan government presided over by Karzai and his “inner circle”, are locked in a state of cul-de-sac with the two sides not willing to let go of some of the most vital issues that are important for them. The recent controversies over physical clash inside the Arg involving Karzai’s chief of staff and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs’ deputy minister have brought to open what has long been an open secret.
The skirmishes between these two high-ranking insiders in the Karzai’s team have been long brewing. The deputy minister had indeed left the Arg for the Foreign Ministry after losing a turf war to the highly influential chief of staff. The clash of divergent interests and ideologies inside the president’s team has long been known. Some influential conservative forces close to the President are now battling over tipping the strategic deal to their side.
The conservative forces in the Arg have been increasingly vocal about their anti-American views and this has caused successive rifts between them and those liberals in the Foreign Ministry. The “divided palace”, as a commentary by the Al-Jazeera puts it, has hindered the negotiations towards finalizing the strategic agreement.
As the Al-Jazeera piece puts it across vividly, the tone and views in the conservative wing of the president’s team is highly nationalistic and against yielding to a much closer military and political partnership with the U.S. The U.S., despite its public positions to the contrary, is desperate after securing the strategicdeal and its outcome in terms of managing to extract a long-term military presence. The U.S. and the Pentagon view these problems as mere hiccups and are confident about eventually securing that sort of Afghan commitment concerning a long-term military presence.
The U.S. had hoped that the strategic deal with Afghanistan could be signed before the NATO summit in Chicago in May. The resurgence of those forces which are not sympathetic to American long-term presence has complicated the matters. Afghanistan will be high on the summit’s agenda. The Obama administration and the Pentagon now have to go through the May summit in Chicago without the crucial strategic deal.
Americans were unprepared for dealing with the kind of outpouring of popular anger and frustration that a sizable section of Afghan population pulled off following the incidents in Bagram. American confusion was palpable in the unannounced visit of Leon Panetta to Afghanistan and his efforts to calm inflamed nerves and take stock of the fast-developing situation. It has dawned upon the Americans that managing their objective of indefinite military presence in Afghanistan has proved to be much more difficult than earlier thought. The talks about talks with Taliban leadership are getting nowhere. Taliban have already made it clear that these talks have come to a halt. They blame American heavy-handedness in conditionsand pre-conditions for the failure and redeem themselves as truly committed to the cause of peace. However, matters are much more complicated than theses implistic assertions.
Recent offer made to the U.S. by Russia inviting Americans to use a Russian naval port for the transit of troops and supplies into Afghanistan has been tempting the U.S. and Pentagon. However, going by the behavior and remarks of the chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, Martin Dempsey, the U.S. is wary of going through the Northern Distribution Network through Russia and the central Asian countries. These supply routes come with much greater economic and geo-political costs that the U.S. takes into account. The option that is still most valued for the U.S. is to go back to Pakistan and knock at the doors at Rawalpindi. Dempsey has already confirmed that Pentagon is in “direct” talks with Pakistani military and Gen. Kayani over the possibility of reopening the Pakistani supply routes.
The continued standoff in the U.S.-Pakistani relations is undermining the American and Afghan efforts in Afghanistan. The U.S. and, more specifically, the Pentagon desperately need to “reset” relations with Pakistan in order to jump-start the stalled train in Afghanistan. Pakistan and its military are sitting pretty and confident that, in this “great game”, it will be able to maintain the upper hand and Americans, sooner or later, will have to come down from the high horse. This has been more or less happening with Martin Dempsey, the chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of staff having already knocked at the doors in Rawalpindi.
For the U.S. managing the increasingly complex political environment in Kabul is proving to be beyond its reach. Numerous high-ranking American officials, the late Richard Holbrooke forexample, have expressed dismay over the fierce opposition to a closer partnership with the West among a sizable section of Afghan political elites. Now John Allen and Ryan Crocker have come to taste some of that frustration and this would figure prominently in the way the U.S. will craft its future policies in Afghanistan. The Chicago NATO Summit in May will, most likely, see a renewed activism on Afghanistan by the U.S.’s NATO allies.
The NATO deems it an absolute necessity to brush up on the weakening momentum of the alliance to stay the course in Afghanistan and, for that purpose, the summit will be a pivotal event. For the U.S. re-kindling a more active engagement in Afghanistan by its European allies has taken on increasing importance after the recent events and the large-scale public unrest over the perceived American misdemeanors.