Open hostility: Karzai blasts his foreign sponsors as presidential elections loom

Afghan President Hamid Karzai has stuffed the Christmas stockings of his former foreign benefactors with coal and scorn, as his government’s battle of words with its international backers over corruption further fouls the strained pre-election atmosphere in Afghanistan.

Speaking at last week’s “International Anti-Corruption Day” symposium in Kabul, Karzai brazenly taunted the foreign powers that selected him as interim leader seven Decembers past in 2001, and have been responsible, with their military might, for maintaining his hold on power ever since.

“None of the foreign countries that chant anti-corruption slogans and the slogans of high sincerity are here,” Karzai said at the outset of his speech. “Only a few of them are here. Do we have the representatives from these countries? Who is here to represent the US? Anyone from the US?

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“Nobody from the USA?” the president continued, as officials from the U.N. and other international agencies began to squirm. “I know Ambassador Dell, he is not here. I know Ambassador Wood, he is not here.

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Karzai wasn’t finished. “What about the British? Anyone from Britain? We will see today... Canada? Nobody from Canada? What about France, Italy and others?

"They come to us and give us lectures about it (official corruption) every day but they do not come here."

The outburst laid bare the searing tensions that could well spell the end of Karzai’s tenure, divisions that have grown over the past year as the U.S.-dominated fight to defeat the Taliban and rebuild Afghanistan has been hobbled by official thievery, graft and betrayal on a monumental scale.

Largely ignored, until recently, by the mainstream news media, the crisis was thrown into sharp focus two weeks ago by the British government’s former minister in charge of the Afghanistan brief.

"Institutionally, Afghanistan is corrupt from top to bottom,” Kim Howells told the House of Commons in London on Dec. 10th. “There are few signs that the chaotic hegemony of warlords, gangsters, presidential placemen, incompetent and under-resourced provincial governors and self-serving government ministers has been challenged in any effective way by President Karzai.”

"On the contrary,” Howells told MPs, “those individuals appear to be thriving, not least because Hamid Karzai has convinced himself that he cannot afford to sack or challenge the strongmen who, through corruption, brutality, power of arms or tribal status are capable of controlling their territories and fiefdoms."

Yes, Minister, one is tempted to say:  but what about the international powers’ complicity in corruption? And what about the deceptive PR campaigns the U.S. and its allies have used, up to now, to keep folks back home in awe of Afghanistan’s fashionista president?

A source who has witnessed some of the fiery behind-the-scenes confrontations over corruption between Karzai and officials of the western powers tells skyreporter that the sessions often degenerated into finger-pointing shouting matches.

“The internationals would cite abuses in government ministries, then the president and his staff would point out the many instances where foreign governments handed out contracts and subcontracts to criminals, or even indirectly to insurgents, with absolutely no accountability.

“Then there’s the exhorbitant salaries of all the foreign consultants. Who are they trying to fool, these big powers? They’ve had their own ways of benefiting from all the money generated by the aid programs.”

The United States will spend $34 billion in Afghanistan in 2008, according to the Congressional Research Service, with the Pentagon accounting for nearly $2.3 billion per month. It’s estimated that 40% of funds from donor nations return to source countries by way of salaries, commissions and corporate profits. As little as 20 cents of each donated dollar benefits Afghans directly. 

Against this turgid background, a presidential election looms in 2009. Karzai’s outbursts would seem to support the theory that the president views the flogging of foreign powers as a sure vote-getter.

In response, power brokers from the outgoing Bush administration have been investing a good deal of time and money in the hope of splitting the vote. Two Afghan-Americans, economist Ashraf Ghani and former Interior Minister Ali Jalali, are preparing their respective candidacies with U.S. backing.

Meantime “King” Zalmay Khalilzad, in his final days as the Bush administration’s man at the U.N., is stirring up anxiety and expectation in equal measure.

As the domineering former U.S. Ambassador to Kabul, Khalilzad was for years Karzai’s main overseer. His growing impatience with the president has led the Afghan-American Khalilzad to ponder his own run for Afghanistan’s top office, though he has put as much effort into stoking the ambitions of Ghani and Jalali, and even the disgraced former Attorney General, Abdul Jabar Sabet.

Though viewed at best as a joker, and at worst a criminal (Sabet remains under investigation by his successor at the AG’s office), he was received in New York a month ago by Khalilzad, who encouraged the old rogue to press on with his bizarre candidacy.

To which, no doubt, Hamid Karzai would say:  “I told you so.”

On that particular point, it's hard to argue with the president. Beyond all the PR, there has been only one truly multilateral, multinational phenomenon thus far in Afghanistan: corruption.