In their more reflective moments in the White House residence, the East Wing, Barack and Michelle Obama must have considered the meaning of the messages they received this month from Copenhagen and Oslo. The message that was conveyed by the Nobel committee was that its members, who are self-appointed keepers of some of the world’s most cherished ideals, like what the president of the United States of America stands for and are willing to put their reputation on the line by investing him with the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize. The message from the International Olympic Committee, on the other hand, was that although they were charmed by both the US president and the first lady in Copenhagen, like much of the world, the committee was not yet ready to reward the US as a country in any way after the colossal damage wrought on the world by eight years of George W. Bush.
In recent weeks, Obama had the chance of a presidential term to make a significant course correction and demonstrate to the international community that Washington was changing its ways of dealing with the world: in particular, with smaller and weaker nations over whose destiny it has a huge influence. But he blew it, and the debris that his ambivalence has left behind does not make a pretty picture.
With the Indian embassy in Kabul coming under a terrorist attack for the second time in 15 months, it should deeply concern New Delhi that an American with considerable influence and pedigree attempted a regime change in Afghanistan which would have brought that country once again under the complete tutelage of the US. It is obvious that the attempt by Peter W. Galbraith, until recently deputy special representative of the United Nations secretary-general in Afghanistan, had the cloak-and-dagger support of a section of the Obama administration. A clique within the Obama administration that wanted to replace the president, Hamid Karzai, in Kabul, irrespective of the outcome of the recent presidential election, also attempted to disguise its coup d’etat as a constitutional transition. This was to give it legitimacy within Afghanistan and among those abroad, including India, who are doing whatever possible to assist Afghans on the path to a better future.
Fortunately for everyone, the attempt at regime change, misusing the United Nations, was firmly nipped in the bud by the secretary-general, Ban Ki-moon. Two weeks ago, Ban fired Galbraith, the mastermind of the plot. Belatedly, the Obama administration has stepped up and acted in support of Galbraith’s boss, the head of the UN Mission in Afghanistan, the Norwegian, Kai Eide. Last week, Obama’s envoy in Kabul, Karl W. Eikenberry, called a meeting of resident ambassadors in the Afghan capital to insist that the US was backing Eide. On Sunday, key players in the international community rallied in support of Eide. Along with Eikenberry, the British, the French and the German ambassadors as well as the European Union special representative and Nato’s senior civilian representative in Kabul were present at a press conference called by the Norwegian to explain the UN’s role in the Afghan election process.
But Obama could definitely do more. Indeed, he should do more to support the UN secretary-general’s actions on Afghanistan because when the ongoing assessments on Afghanistan, which are now in full swing in Washington, are over, it ought to be plain to Obama that Galbraith is doing as much damage as the Taliban to US goals in Kabul.
Galbraith has not quite given up. Using sections of the American media, which are willing to swallow hook, line and sinker his version of the developments in Afghanistan surrounding the elections, Galbraith is now trying to discredit the poll process irredeemably, which will install the next president in Kabul. Having lost his battle against Eide, at least for now, Galbraith’s current mission is to inflict as much damage as possible on the UN and dent its credibility. Sadly, as a practitioner of diplomacy, it does not seem to concern Galbraith that he is cutting off his nose to spite his face.
The story of the attempted regime change in Kabul actually goes back to a period well before the appointment of Galbraith to the Number Two post in the UN set up in Afghanistan. Joseph Biden, now vice- president, had lost trust in Karzai as early as February 2008, when he and two other US senators found the Afghan president to be evasive and unaccountable on corruption and governance in a country where a significant portion of the Western, and Indian, development aid was going into a black hole. It soon became clear that with Obama as president, Karzai would no longer have the luxury of cosy fire-side chats with the US president.
Enter Richard Holbrooke as Obama’s special envoy for Afghanistan and Pakistan, resentful that his chance to have another go at the Nobel Peace Prize by ‘solving’ Kashmir had been thwarted by India, which conveyed a message to Obama through the back channel that no visa would be given to Holbrooke to travel to New Delhi if his mandate included India. With India out of his purview, Holbrooke decided that he would ‘sort out’ Afghanistan. It is an open secret in Foggy Bottom, the seat of the US state department, that it was Holbrooke who proposed Galbraith’s name for the Number Two slot at the UN in Afghanistan. On the face of it, there could not have been a better choice if anyone wanted to shake up a complacent Karzai administration.
But like the proverbial leopard that cannot change its spots, Galbraith is incapable of sticking to the straight and narrow path. As ambassador to Croatia in the 1990s, when Holbrooke was brokering peace in the Balkans, Galbraith, it was alleged by the CIA station chief at his own embassy, was abetting — or at least turning a blind eye to — an arms smuggling operation by Iran for Bosnian Muslims in defiance of a global weapons embargo. Indians know Galbraith as a close friend of Benazir Bhutto from their years at Oxford and Harvard: that friendship considerably complicated Indo-Pakistan equations later because of Galbraith’s partisan actions as a senior staff member on the US Senate foreign relations committee when Benazir became Pakistan’s prime minister.
In Afghanistan’s case, Galbraith’s solution for the malpractices in the recent presidential election was to persuade Karzai, who won 54.6 per cent of the votes, and Abdullah Abdullah, who garnered 27.8 per cent, to step aside in favour of a third candidate: an economist formerly with the World Bank, Ashraf Ghani, who got a mere 2.7 per cent of the vote. It would seem that the phrase, ‘a cure that is worse than the disease’, was invented for Galbraith’s actions.
According to senior UN officials, Galbraith offered to go to Biden and get the Obama administration’s approval for such a regime change which would have been a recipe for disaster in Afghanistan. Long before the election process started in Afghanistan, there were whispers in Washington that the US would somehow install Ghani, whose reputation in Afghanistan is that of a stooge of the Americans.
Nobody, including Eide, is saying that the Afghan presidential election was completely free or fair. But the question really is how free or fair was it? Last month, India’s external affairs minister, S.M. Krishna, hit the nail on its head when he reminded a reporter from the Wall Street Journal, who tried to corner Krishna on the outcome of the Afghan poll, about the election malpractices in Florida in 2000. Krishna said that it happens in many elections that the results are questioned.
If Karzai had got 98 per cent of the votes at least in Pashtun areas, Saddam-Hussein-style, there would have been a case for annulling the poll results. Eide is doing not only Afghanistan but also emerging democracies everywhere a great service by insisting that reports of malpractices should be verified and not be arbitrarily used against Karzai simply because Galbraith and Holbrooke do not like, say, the Afghan president’s distinctive Karakul sheepskin cap.
Eide’s action in refusing to go along with Galbraith’s plans to disenfranchise many Pashtun supporters of Karzai by closing 1,200 of the 7,000 polling stations will be appreciated by many Indians who recall that the determination many years ago of India’s Election Commission to keep polling stations open at great risk in India’s insurgency-hit states like Punjab and Jammu and Kashmir was what ultimately saw the triumph of popular will in those states and dealt a blow to violent extremism.
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