By Anatol Lieven
The New York Review of Books - December 3, 2013
What on earth is Hamid Karzai up to? When I visited Afghanistan in
October, most people with whom I spoke assumed that the Afghan president
would resist signing a long-term military basing agreement with the
United States until the Loya Jirga (grand national assembly) had
approved it. At that point, having burnished his credentials as an
Afghan nationalist, it was thought that he would sign, since the Loya
Jirga would give him cover and since he must know that the entire future
of his state and his own Pashtun ethnic group probably depends on it.
But now that the Loya Jirga has approved the agreement, Karzai has
instead announced he might not sign until after the presidential
election in April—thereby putting at risk the willingness of the US and
the West to remain engaged in Afghanistan at all.
For the agreement is only partly about a continued US military
presence after the withdrawal of ground troops next year. More important
is a continuation of promised US and Western aid. Already there is a
strong desire among Western politicians and populations to reduce that
aid, citing both economic hardship at home and the immense corruption of
the Afghan state. In the event of a complete withdrawal of Western
forces it is likely that the international community’s commitment to go
on helping Afghanistan will rapidly disappear. And if that happens, the
Afghan state will collapse, just as it did in early 1992 when Soviet
subsidies stopped after the fall of the USSR.
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