Starting Points: Ahmed Wali Karzai

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May 9, 2010

Obama makes personal diplomacy part of Afghan strategy

President Obama with, from left, Vice President Biden, President Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan and President Asif Ali Zardari of Pakistan. (Bill O'leary/the Washington Post)

By Scott Wilson and Rajiv Chandrasekaran
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, May 9, 2010; A01

President Obama has bluntly instructed his national security team to treat Afghan President Hamid Karzai with more public respect, after a recent round of heavy-handed statements by U.S. officials and other setbacks infuriated the Afghan leader and called into question his relationship with Washington.

During a White House meeting last month, Obama made clear that Karzai is the chief U.S. partner in the war effort -- which will be reflected in his visit to Washington that begins Monday, according to senior administration officials. In doing so, Obama is seeking to impose discipline on an administration that has sent mixed signals about Karzai's legitimacy and his value to the U.S.-led counterinsurgency campaign. As a result, Karzai threatened to join the Taliban just days after Obama concluded his first presidential trip to Kabul in late March.

After a two-hour palace meeting that advisers to both leaders described as productive, Karzai grew bitter after receiving a copy of comments made by Obama's national security adviser on the way to Kabul that struck him as insulting. Days later, Karzai read in a newspaper article that an unnamed U.S. official was threatening to put Ahmed Wali Karzai, his half brother, on the military's kill-or-capture list.

Karzai had been led to believe months earlier that his brother -- the leader of Kandahar's provincial council -- would remain in his post despite persistent accusations of corruption and ties to drug trafficking. Karzai erupted in anger soon after, stunning the White House.

"There has been a rough patch," said a senior administration official who participates in Afghanistan policy development. "Frankly, some of what Karzai said needed to be responded to. But the bottom line is that there has been an improvement since then in the atmospherics and in the substance of our dealings with President Karzai and his team."

Managing the relationship with Karzai is part of the far broader challenge of maintaining political support for a nearly nine-year-old war, which a new Washington Post-ABC News poll found is once again opposed by a majority of Americans. Fifty-two percent of respondents said the war is not worth fighting, which means the bump in support for the war that followed Obama's announcing his new Afghanistan strategy in December has disappeared.

Karzai's meeting with Obama in the Oval Office on Wednesday will be the centerpiece of a rare extended visit. Over the next four days, Karzai and many of his senior cabinet ministers will be publicly embraced and privately reassured by Obama of the U.S. commitment to Afghanistan, which officials say will endure long after American forces begin leaving in July 2011.

Karzai has been frightened by the deadline, U.S. officials acknowledge. Obama intends to devote much of his meeting with him to spelling out a long-term relationship that includes far fewer U.S. troops but deeper diplomatic and economic support.

It is not certain whether the message discipline will be able to reset what has long been a complicated relationship. Despite Obama's edict that the Afghan leader receive public support, deep policy differences remain inside the administration, including among top U.S. officials in Afghanistan, over Karzai's commitment to the government and security reforms essential to the U.S. mission.

Some of the mixed signals in recent months appear to be a direct result of the president's actions. In contrast to George W. Bush, Obama established more of an arm's-length personal relationship with Karzai. He also raised questions about Karzai's viability as a partner during a White House strategy review of the Afghanistan war last fall.

But Obama now wants his administration to close ranks, senior officials said.

Karzai's visit has been designed to be "a manifest demonstration of the relationship and the issues we are working on," the senior administration official said. Karzai will be hosted at dinners by Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, whom he trusts perhaps more than any other U.S. official, and Vice President Biden, with whom he has had a stormy relationship.

The administration has encouraged Karzai to bring a large delegation of senior Afghan officials, giving them a chance to meet their U.S. Cabinet counterparts and influential congressional leaders. Among them are ministers Obama recommended to Karzai during the Kabul visit, based on their competence rather than the tribal or ethnic affiliations that can complicate government reforms in Afghanistan.

"We want to emphasize that this is not a relationship with just one person," said a second senior administration official involved in Afghanistan policy, who, like others, spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe White House thinking about Karzai. But, the official hastened to add, "we do not look at this as a zero-sum situation or as a way of working around Kabul."

'Spiral of events'

Karzai's most recent tirade was set off by what one White House official called "a spiral of events" surrounding Obama's visit -- some within the administration's control and some beyond it.

According to senior administration officials, the circumstances that angered Karzai included remarks made by national security adviser James L. Jones before the meeting even began.

Jones told reporters traveling aboard Air Force One that Obama intended to "make [Karzai] understand that in his second term there are certain things that have not been paid attention to almost since Day One." Those remarks were viewed by Afghan officials as condescending, but Karzai did not learn of them until after Obama left Afghanistan.

Three days later, Karzai was enraged to read a report in The Washington Post that quoted an unnamed U.S. official threatening Ahmed Wali Karzai with a spot on the military's Joint Prioritized Engagement List, better known as the kill-or-capture list. The next day, Afghanistan's lower house of parliament rejected Karzai's proposal to change the national election law to give him more control over the body that investigates voter fraud, a move the Obama administration had opposed.

"We have our own national interest in the country," Karzai told a gathering of Afghan election officials the next day, accusing the United Nations and the international media of conspiring against him. "They wanted a servant government."

Within days, Karzai called Clinton to clarify his comments. But days later, White House press secretary Robert Gibbs still declined to call Karzai an ally.

"At the end of the day for Karzai, this is very much a question of respect," said a third senior administration official involved in Afghanistan policy. "He tends, like any head of state, to conflate an insult against me as an insult against my people. We tend to try to separate the two."

'Apply that touch'

Karzai was not the only leader who was angry. Obama was, too, particularly at the way U.S. officials had spoken about the Afghan president.

Obama made clear in a meeting with his senior national security team that Karzai is "someone we're going to have to work with for the next 4 1/2 years." Therefore, "high expectations should be set for [Karzai], and he should be held to them," but Obama would not tolerate any more public criticism.

On April 8, a note from Obama was delivered to Karzai in Kabul, thanking him for arranging his recent visit. Three days later, Clinton and Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates appeared on the Sunday morning talk shows to praise Karzai.

Obama's decision most reflected the position of Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, the military commander in Afghanistan. McChrystal had been arguing during monthly Situation Room review sessions that U.S. officials needed to show more public deference to Karzai.

The chief U.S. diplomat in Afghanistan, Ambassador Karl W. Eikenberry, has been on the other side of that argument, pushing to identify leaders outside Kabul to work with, rather than relying so heavily on Karzai.

In Afghanistan, much of Karzai's handling has fallen to McChrystal, who often takes the Afghan leader on his travels inside the country. According to diplomats in Afghanistan and analysts who travel there often, Karzai does not think he can trust Eikenberry or Richard C. Holbrooke, Obama's special envoy to the region, who has had a long and bitter relationship with the Afghan leader. A senior foreign diplomat in Kabul called Holbrooke a Karzai "bete noire," but both Holbrooke and Eikenberry say they have a productive relationship with the Afghan president.

Ryan C. Crocker, the former U.S. ambassador to Baghdad, said the troop surge in Iraq succeeded in part because of the unity he and Gen. David H. Petraeus, the U.S. commander there at the time, showed in dealing with Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, another complicated leader. But Crocker said the troop surge's success was also made possible by Bush's personal relationship with Maliki, with whom Bush spoke often via videoconference.

"So there was confidence at the top," said Crocker, who is now dean of Texas A&M University's Bush School of Government and Public Service. "President Obama certainly has the touch, there's no doubt about it. And now is the time for him to apply that touch."

'Designed to focus us'

In his December speech at West Point, Obama announced that U.S. troops would begin to leave Afghanistan in July 2011.

"The date was meant to focus the mind of the Afghans, certainly," a senior administration official said. "But it was also designed to focus us back here. It enforces discipline on a project that really had been adrift for years."

Diplomats in the region say the date has sometimes had the opposite effect on Karzai, causing him to weigh every U.S. demand against its potential implications for his political life after the troops leave. Those fears lay behind his comments about joining the Taliban, officials say.

Obama is mindful of Karzai's anxieties, and he began describing the long-term U.S. role in Afghanistan in a videoconference with Karzai a few weeks before his Kabul visit, a senior administration official said. Obama will spend much of his Wednesday meeting with Karzai addressing those same concerns.

"President Karzai wants to have a sense of the enduring nature of the commitment, of his relationship with the president, and where he stands -- and that's natural," the senior official said. "What we'll be doing coming out of this is to talk in more detail about what the long-term relations between the U.S. and Afghanistan will look like. And that isn't about having 100,000 troops there forever."

Staff writers Al Kamen and Anne E. Kornblut and polling director Jon Cohen contributed to this story.

Tensions between Eikenberry, McChrystal will be focus of their Washington visit

Image via Wikipedia

By Joshua Partlow
Sunday, May 9, 2010; A01

They are both decorated generals, West Point graduates who studied at Harvard University and earnest taskmasters who would rather work than sleep.

The U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan, Karl W. Eikenberry, and the top U.S. military commander there, Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, assumed their posts amid lofty expectations that they could re-create the hand-in-glove partnership that Gen. David H. Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan C. Crocker had while leading the war effort in Iraq.

But the Eikenberry-and-McChrystal team that returns to Washington this week, alongside Afghan President Hamid Karzai, has a much different dynamic.

Both men said in interviews that they enjoy a productive relationship and have built stronger bonds between troops and civilians across Afghanistan. Still, they have had significant disagreements over the course of the Afghanistan war and have struggled to align their visions for how to work with Karzai's government, according to interviews with U.S., NATO and Afghan officials.

Few critics suggest that those differences have harmed U.S. interests in Afghanistan. People who have worked with both men said, however, that clear tensions exist at the top of the Obama administration's most important military and foreign policy endeavor.

Image by talkradionews via Flickr

At times their differences over strategy have been public, particularly after two of Eikenberry's cables to Washington last year were leaked to the news media. The cables warned that McChrystal's request for new troops might be counterproductive as Karzai was "not an adequate strategic partner." McChrystal's staff members were particularly upset that they weren't made aware of Eikenberry's position before he sent the cables to Washington, they said in interviews.

Eikenberry has resisted some of McChrystal's wartime experiments. The ambassador refused to release funds to expand a military effort to turn villagers into armed guards. He opposed one Army brigade's plan to form an anti-Taliban alliance with a Pashtun tribe and funnel it development money. He criticized the military's proposal to buy generators and diesel fuel for the energy-starved city of Kandahar and supported a longer-term hydroelectric dam project.

Their views have diverged despite shared experience: Eikenberry served 18 months as the NATO commander in Afghanistan, the job McChrystal now holds, before retiring from the military and returning as ambassador. As McChrystal has overhauled the war strategy, some of the legacy he is undoing is Eikenberry's.

Eikenberry wanted to become NATO's senior civilian representative, in addition to his job as ambassador, but McChrystal recommended against it, according to diplomats in Kabul. A British diplomat, Mark Sedwill, got the job.

"You have two generals of similar rank who don't agree on the policy, who apparently don't like each other. It makes for a difficult relationship," said Peter W. Galbraith, who served as the top U.S. official in the United Nations' mission to Afghanistan during last year's contested presidential election.

Both men have tried to dispel notions that they disagree on strategy and don't get along.

"The best metaphor I can give you is of an athletic team," Eikenberry said. "We play different positions. We have different but complementary roles. Of course, sometimes we're going to disagree on what's the best play to call, but we're absolutely committed as teammates to see the president's strategy is well-executed."

McChrystal said that he and Eikenberry cooperate effectively and that their relationship should not be measured against the Petraeus-Crocker pairing in Iraq.

"We've known each other for many years. We talk through all the things we deal with," McChrystal said. "Some people are looking for an Iraq model. But Iraq wasn't a 46-nation coalition."

Civil-military integration

The two generals first crossed professional paths in 2002, when McChrystal, who had worked as chief of staff under Gen. Dan K. McNeill, then coalition commander, helped prepare Eikenberry for a job in Kabul building the fledgling Afghan National Army. Later, McChrystal ran the Joint Special Operations Command when Eikenberry held the top military job in Afghanistan.

They now work more independently because their roles aren't perfectly aligned, they said, with McChrystal in charge of the 130,000-strong NATO coalition, not just the American contingent.

Some disagreements between the men may reflect growing pains, as the military makes room for the greatly expanded U.S. Embassy in Kabul. When President Obama took office last year, there were 360 American civilians in Afghanistan. Now there are more than 1,000 and counting, the most rapid growth of a U.S. civilian mission since the Vietnam War.

Military field commanders who once may have had political advisers now share authority with co-equal civilian representatives backed by growing staffs. The result is a more forceful civilian voice in decision-making.

When Eikenberry has resisted a military proposal, the rationale is often that he does not want to undermine the Afghan government and the development of its security forces. He says that he must take into account factors beyond short-term stability and that programs without Afghan government ownership won't be sustainable.

"I think that both of us are very proud of the degree of civil-military integration we've been able to achieve in the year that we've been here together," Eikenberry said. "So, of course, there's going to be different perspectives, there's going to be robust debates, and you really want that. You've got to encourage that."

Divided over Karzai

Perhaps the most visible difference in approach is how the men work with Karzai.

McChrystal has adopted a role akin to chief diplomat, building a close partnership with Karzai. In monthly White House review sessions, McChrystal has argued that U.S. officials should show more public deference to Karzai, who he frequently reminds others is "the elected leader of a sovereign country," administration officials said.

In the interview, McChrystal called Karzai a "great partner" who has been "absolutely straightforward with me and been reliable."

Some officials said he has built his relationship with Karzai at the expense of candor. In some instances, he has chosen a less politically controversial path, U.S. officials said, citing his decision to work with Ahmed Wali Karzai, the president's half brother, rather than stress his alleged criminal activity.

"If I don't have credibility with President Karzai, then I think I can't be an effective commander here," McChrystal said. "And it doesn't mean just getting along with him and telling him what he wants to hear. It's convincing him that I'm being a reliable and honest interlocutor with him."

Eikenberry, meanwhile, has had to deliver tougher messages about corruption and governance that often upset Karzai, and his rapport with the mercurial president has seemed to suffer.

During a lengthy policy review in the fall, Eikenberry argued against sending additional U.S. troops to Afghanistan. And U.S. officials said he continues to think that the United States should find other Afghan figures, including provincial leaders, to work with rather than rely so heavily on Karzai. Eikenberry's position infuriated Karzai, who often views U.S. support for "sub-national governments" in Afghanistan as a threat to his authority.

Karzai is a cunning politician who has tried to play Eikenberry and McChrystal off each other and exploit any political differences, U.S. officials said. In recent months, when Karzai has come under U.S. pressure to reform his corrupt government, he has often lashed out publicly.

Since McChrystal took command in June, he has met Karzai more than 45 times, mostly one-on-one, including a regular Sunday morning chat in the presidential palace. In an effort to present Karzai as commander in chief, McChrystal has flown him across the country on five "battlefield circulations."

McChrystal has done more than his predecessors, including Eikenberry, to minimize civilian casualties, such as restricting the use of air power and night raids. He has regularly apologized to Karzai for civilian deaths and shown him video and slide presentations to explain how such mistakes occur.

"He was the first military man to really show that he respected and would respond to Karzai's agenda, civilian casualties, of course, being the biggest issue," one senior NATO official said. "In a sense, Karzai said, 'Here's a soldier that finally I can deal with.' "

Crocker, the former U.S. ambassador to Baghdad, said he and Petraeus rarely differed over policy or approach and carefully calibrated their relationship with Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, another complicated leader. The two almost always saw Maliki together. When meeting him alone, they would brief each other before and after.

Of McChrystal and Eikenberry, Crocker said: "They need to resolve any differences among themselves or take it back to Washington because the stakes in Afghanistan are too great not to have a unified effort."

Partlow reported from Kabul. Staff writers Rajiv Chandrasekaran and Scott Wilson in Washington contributed to this report.