Afghanistan: Is Karzai Handing Over the Castle Keys?

STRATFOR ^ | July 21, 2004

[Axion]

Summary

Afghan President Hamid Karzai says three former militia leaders will be given official posts within their provinces. The move is the latest -- and likely not the last -- in a series of steps aimed at appeasing the warlords, and thus at reducing open opposition to Karzai's government. Few of the promises made by the international community to increase security in Afghanistan and disarm the warlords have materialized, forcing Karzai to go it alone.

Analysts

A plan by Afghan President Hamid Karzai will reshuffle the positions and responsibilities of former Afghan warlords within his government. Atta Mohammad will become governor of the Balkh province, and Hazrat Ali and Mohammad Khan will be put in charge of police forces in the Nangahar and Kandahar provinces. The three were previously given positions in the Afghan army.

Karzai's July 20 announcement comes after a series of halfhearted and broken promises from the international community -- specifically the United Nations and North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) -- to secure Afghanistan and disarm its myriad warlords ahead of 2004 elections. The lack of outside clout has forced Karzai to turn to these same warlords for security assurances. Odds are this will not be the last time Karzai must compromise his efforts to disarm Afghanistan's militias.

Karzai's dilemma is that he needs the support of Afghanistan's warlords if his regime is to survive, but their continued existence is a liability to his strategic goals.

The Afghan army is nowhere near capable of securing the length and breadth of the country, is heavily involved in counterinsurgency operations with the United States and is no rival for the well-armed militia of the warlords -- as evidenced by the token deployment of troops to deal with recent militia threats to Karzai's government. Given that sobering fact, Karzai is left with two choices: Resist the Afghan militia at the potential cost of the relative stability of Afghanistan as all of the varying militias go to war against the government and one another, or ally with the warlords in the hope that at least token acknowledgment of Kabul's authority is given and the status quo is maintained.

It is also worth noting that Taliban insurgents remain extremely active throughout a number of regions in Afghanistan and that the Afghan army does not have the operational capability to confront them. This puts the security of Afghanistan in the hands of the United States and a hodgepodge of local militias who must defend their own territories.

Strategically, the warlords are a liability to Karzai in that he had hopes of disarming the militia, with international backing, and consolidating his control over the countryside. Recent events indicate his goal might be out of reach.

• A U.N.-sponsored program to disarm the militia has produced a scant 11,000 weapons -- a small number considering the (at least) hundreds of thousands of arms that have been lying around Afghanistan since the Soviet-Afghan war and the decade-long battle between the Northern Alliance and the Taliban.
  
• Upon taking office, NATO Secretary-General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer pledged to revitalize the alliance's focus on Afghanistan; that did not happen. After the June 28-29 NATO summit in Istanbul, de Hoop Scheffer again pledged to renew NATO's focus and increase its military participation in the country. NATO officials backed away from that promise fewer than two weeks later, saying it was more a statement of intent than an actual pledge of troops.
  
• National elections, set up to be the first concrete sign of Afghan sovereignty, have been delayed twice, from June to September and then to October. Officials have cited ongoing security concerns and delays in registering voters as reasons for the postponements. Stratfor sources familiar with the U.N. election monitoring process say voter registration has yet to advance beyond the major urban centers and still has a long way to go before even half of eligible voters are on the rolls. Since a majority of Afghans live under the "protection" of one warlord or another, voting will not take place outside Kabul if the militias disapprove.
  

The presidential elections are a must if Karzai is to cement his legitimacy in the eyes of the international community, but they will not be considered free and fair unless a large portion of the population participates -- hence the need for the warlord militias. Their token approval of Karzai in exchange for his legitimization of their power could enable them to successfully run for parliamentary office in the spring of 2005.

In the face of repeated letdowns from the international community and no real hope for a substantial increase in troops from the United States or elsewhere, Karzai has been forced to make a pragmatic decision.

He undoubtedly knows that appointing warlords to influential government positions (such as provincial governor and police chief) only legitimizes their power. The initial hope in post-Taliban Afghanistan was that warlords and their militias would go willingly into the national government and the military. The warlords, however, have proven anything but willing to cede power, either political or military, so Karzai chose the path of least resistance -- and simply handed the men the keys to the proverbial castle.

Moreover, these three warlords are not the only ones operating in Afghanistan. Karzai, it appears, might need to repeat these deals elsewhere.

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