Karzai’s win clouds Obama’s Afghan strategy

What happened

Afghanistan’s troubled presidential election came to a jarring end this week when President Hamid Karzai’s sole opponent dropped out of the race, claiming that a fair vote was impossible. Election officials quickly declared Karzai the winner and canceled the runoff, which had been scheduled for late this week. President Obama, who had pushed hard for the new vote, congratulated Karzai, but warned him that he had “to write a new chapter” in Afghanistan by tackling corruption and building a more inclusive governing coalition. “The proof is not going to be in words, it’s going to be in deeds,” Obama said. Karzai had prevailed in October balloting, but agreed to a runoff against second-place finisher Abdullah Abdullah after international monitors threw out millions of fraudulent votes, driving Karzai’s total below the 50 percent needed for an outright win.

The political turmoil in Afghanistan comes as Obama nears a decision on whether to send tens of thousands of additional troops and on how best to deploy U.S. resources there. Administration officials acknowledge that any effective strategy will require a functional government in Kabul that can deliver services, maintain security, and oppose a Taliban-led insurgency that controls much of the Afghan countryside. The White House must now decide whether Karzai can be a reliable ally, and if not, what that means for the 8-year-old U.S. war effort in Afghanistan.

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What the editorials said

The White House is trying mightily to put a positive spin on this “mess,” said the Los Angeles Times. But there’s no denying that Karzai is looking “increasingly illegitimate,” thus crippling American attempts to forge a unified nation out of chaos. Karzai “is going to have to do everything in his power to persuade his people—and the rest of the world—that he is deserving of their trust,” said The New York Times. He and his reluctant American backers “don’t have much time to get this right.”

The election raises bigger questions about Obama than about Karzai, said The Wall Street Journal. “By broadcasting so publicly its distaste” for Karzai, the administration has poisoned its relationship with the man it needs to carry out its plans for Afghanistan—whatever they turn out to be. The White House’s on-again, off-again, on-again courtship of Afghanistan’s elected leader only reinforces doubts about whether “America’s president is committed to his own strategy.”

What the columnists said

It’s true that Karzai begins his second term “with a marked credibility gap,” said Amir Taheri in the New York Post. But Abdullah’s withdrawal does create “a breathing space in which to sort out several crucial issues.” The most important is the form Afghanistan’s government should take. For centuries, Afghan­istan’s various ethnic and tribal groups shared power under the guidance of a “loya jirga,” or council of elders. The U.S. and NATO can now lean on Karzai to restore this time-honored system, starting with an invitation to Abdullah to join his government. “For Afghanistan to have peace, it must belong to everyone.”

But after the farcical conclusion to the “election,” said Chris­topher Hitchens in Slate.com, “there can’t be any Afghan who believes that the process is anything much more than a cynical fix.” And by stamping its approval on Karzai’s stolen victory, the Obama administration, as well as the United Nations, has essentially handed a victory to the Taliban thugs. Not only does the election harden Afghans’ contempt for their own government, said Peter Galbraith in the London Guardian, it undercuts the rationale for committing more troops. With Karzai in control, sending additional U.S. or NATO troops “is a waste of precious military resources.”

The U.S. is left with “a classic American dilemma,” said David Ignatius in The Washington Post. “How does a superpower fix problems in a faraway country without dictating policies in a way that ultimately enfeebles the very people we are trying to help?” Obama seems to be trying to walk this “tightrope,” by both backing Karzai and pushing him to change his ways. But in the end, Karzai must understand that for him, “the political calculus is brutally simple: It’s reform or die.”