BY KRISTIN KEITH
With the strategic partnership agreement confirmed in Chicago at the May NATO summit, President Hamid Karzai and President Barack Obama committed to a plan for NATO troops in Afghanistan to withdraw by 2014 and for long-term military aid in the country through 2024. Despite the public accolades, however, there is a backdrop of tension and domestic political pressures for both presidents, and many questions about whether Afghanistan can police itself without extensive security help from NATO troops.
“It seems to me that Karzai is a bit like a teenager who balks at instructions and thinks he is ready for greater responsibility but isn’t quite as ready as he would like to think,” said Daniel Serwer, senior fellow in the Center for Transatlantic Relations at Johns Hopkins University, in an email interview.
The history of corruption within the Afghan government is a key risk area for the partnership, according to Marvin Weinbaum, scholar-in-residence at the Middle East Institute and a former analyst for Pakistan and Afghanistan in the U.S. State Department. Karzai also enjoyed a warmer relationship with the Bush administration than with Obama’s. And the withdrawal plan relies largely on the tenuous ability of the Afghan National Army to secure the country.
The largely American-driven initiative, and the dependence of NATO allies on the United States, also affects the nature of the commitment. Some experts say that a commitment by NATO allies, particularly in Europe, is a consequence of allies’ wanting to fall in line with the United States, not a dedication to Afghanistan.
“It’s not about Afghanistan. It’s about dependence on the United States. But they can’t say that to their own electorate,” said Anatol Lieven, a former war correspondent and co-author of “Ethical Realism: A Vision for America’s Role in the World.”
Obama and Karzai also need cooperation from each other in order to achieve domestic goals. Some experts say Obama needed to plan a strict withdrawal plan in order to wind down an increasingly unpopular war in the face of an upcoming election, and Karzai needed financial and military support from alliances like NATO in order to hold onto power.
“Karzai is willing to cooperate with Washington because he has something Washington needs, which are the bases within Afghanistan,” said Jack D. Segal, a former chief political advisor to NATO’s operational commander who traveled frequently to Afghanistan from 2002 to 2010. Segal, who also attended the NATO summit in Chicago, emphasized that such bases are needed in order to deploy drones in the region and that Obama has never ruled out the possibility of future counterterrorism efforts.
Karzai has said he would step down in 2014 (and is constitutionally barred from taking on a third term as president), but no Afghan leader has stepped down voluntarily so far and no clear leader appears ready to lead citizens through what will be a tumultuous time in the country as the withdrawal comes to a head, according to Thomas Barfield, president of the American Institute for Afghanistan Studies and author of “Afghanistan: A Cultural and Political History.” Karzai has discussed holding elections earlier in 2013 in order to avoid such a scenario, which Barfield said presents clear dangers.
“You don’t want political uncertainty or difficulties to break out at a time when the security situation is most vulnerable,” Barfield said.
