From: wolda002@umn.edu
Date: Wed Mar 25 2009 - 16:43:49 EST
US will appoint Afghan 'prime minister' to bypass Hamid Karzai
White House plans new executive role to challenge corrupt government in
Kabul
By Julian Borger and Ewan MacAskill
Global Research, March 23, 2009
The Guardian - 2009-03-22
The US and its European allies are preparing to plant a high-profile
figure in the heart of the Kabul government in a direct challenge to the
Afghan president, Hamid Karzai, the Guardian has learned.
The creation of a new chief executive or prime ministerial role is aimed at
bypassing Karzai. In a further dilution of his power, it is proposed that
money be diverted from the Kabul government to the provinces. Many US and
European officials have become disillusioned with the extent of the
corruption and incompetence in the Karzai government, but most now believe
there are no credible alternatives, and predict the Afghan president will
win re-election in August.
A revised role for Karzai has emerged from the White House review of
Afghanistan and Pakistan ordered by Barack Obama when he became president.
It isto be unveiled at a special conference on Afghanistan at The Hague on
March 31.
As well as watering down Karzai's personal authority by installing a senior
official at the president's side capable of playing a more efficient
executive role, the US and Europeans are seeking to channel resources to
the provinces rather than to central government in Kabul.
A diplomat with knowledge of the review said: "Karzai is not delivering. If
we are going to support his government, it has to be run properly to ensure
the levels of corruption decrease, not increase. The levels of corruption
are frightening."
Another diplomat said alternatives to Karzai had been explored and
discarded: "No one could be sure that someone else would not turn out to be
10 times worse. It is not a great position."
The idea of a more dependable figure working alongside Karzai is one of the
proposals to emerge from the White House review, completed last week.
Obama, locked away at the presidental retreat Camp David, was due to make a
final decision this weekend.
Obama is expected to focus in public on overall strategy rather than the
details, and, given its sensitivity, to skate over Karzai's new role. The
main recommendation is for the Afghanistan objectives to be scaled back,
and for Obama to sell the war to the US public as one to ensure the country
cannot again be a base for al-Qaida and the Taliban, rather than the more
ambitious aim of the Bush administration of trying to create a
European-style democracy in Central Asia.
Other recommendations include: increasing the number of Afghan troops from
65,000 to 230,000 as well as expanding the 80,000-strong police force;
sending more US and European civilians to build up Afghanistan's
infrastructure; and increased aid to Pakistan as part of a policy of trying
to persuade it to tackle al-Qaida and Taliban elements.
The proposal for an alternative chief executive, which originated with the
US, is backed by Europeans. "There needs to be a deconcentration of power,"
said one senior European official. "We need someone next to Karzai, a sort
of chief executive, who can get things done, who will be reliable for us
and accountable to the Afghan people."
Money and power will flow less to the ministries in Kabul and far more to
the officials who run Afghanistan outside the capital – the 34 provincial
governors and 396 district governors. "The point on which we insist is that
the time is now for a new division of responsibilities, between central
power and local power," the senior European official said.
No names have emerged for the new role but the US holds in high regard the
reformist interior minister appointed in October, Mohammed Hanif Atmar.
The risk for the US is that the imposition of a technocrat alongside Karzai
would be viewed as colonialism, even though that figure would be an Afghan.
Karzai declared his intention last week to resist a dilution of his power.
Last week he accused an unnamed foreign government of trying to weaken
central government in Kabul.
"That is not their job," the Afghan president said. "Afghanistan will never
be a puppet state."
The UK government has since 2007 advocated dropping plans to turn
Afghanistan into a model, European-style state.
Richard Holbrooke, the US envoy for Afghanistan and Pakistan, who will
implement the new policy, said it would represent a "vastly restructured
effort". At the weekend in Brussels, he was scathing about the Bush
administration's conduct of the counter-insurgency. "The failures in the
civilian side ... are so enormous we can at least hope that if we get our
act together ... we can do a lot better," he said.
----[This List to be used for Eritrea Related News Only]----