Crisis in Afghanistan

The U.S. press is downplaying the threat of civil war in Afghanistan. On July 22-24, several articles appeared in US newspapers and on the two main wire services regarding a threat to Afghan President Hamid Karzai and his subsequent request for US troops to serve as his personal bodyguards in Kabul. Only two of these articles examine the nature of the threat: factional fighting within his own government.

The first article to appear, datelined July 22, was by Dusan Stojanovic of the Associated Press, filed from Kabul. His article "Afghan Leader's Safety Fears Mount," opens with the astounding assertion: "President Hamid Karzai has sidelined his Afghan bodyguards and called in US troops to replace them in a sign of rising security fears following the murder of an Afghan vice president, his aide said Monday. Diplomats said the move followed 'serious threats' against Karzai, some believed to have come from within his own cabinet." While Stojanovic follows this bombshell with reassuring quotes from Donald Rumsfeld and Karzai aide Fazel Akbar, his article also contains other, important bits of information:

"A Western diplomat said on condition of anonymity that Karzai faced 'serious threats' not only from remnants of the Taliban and al-Qaida but from warlords furious over Karzai's recent order to disband their private forces--whose presence is one of the most serious problems facing the government."

And:

"...warlords are reluctant to hand over weapons and troops to the national army. A new, internationally trained battalion provided security for the loya jirga in June, but more than one-third of the soldiers have since left the unit because of lack of support from Fahim's Ministry of Defense, according to the United Nations" (Note: Stojanovic doesn't mention that the "troops" who guarded the loya jirga entered the assembly tent--against the rules of the assembly--and harassed and threatened delegates; some even made death threats against specific delegates, including outspoken women.)

And:

"Fahim, an ethnic Tajik, who commanded the Northern Alliance forces that chased the Taliban from Kabul with US help last year, has an estimated 300 tanks and 500 armored personnel carriers at his disposal. Some Western diplomats consider Fahim's force a possible threat to Karzai's administration, although none alleged he was part of any specific plot. They say that if Fahim wanted to topple Karzai, an ethnic Pashtun, he could easily sweep aside the lightly armed International Security Assistance Force that has been entrusted with Kabul's security."

And regarding the recently-murdered vice president:

"Qadir was the second government minister killed in Kabul in six months. Abdul Rahman, the minister of aviation and tourism was killed in February at the Kabul airport. Witnesses said he was killed by would-be pilgrims furious over delayed flights to Saudi Arabia, but Karzai blamed a plot among high-ranking officials in his own government."

Is Karzai being paranoid, or is he a sensible, frightened man caught in a power struggle?

Carlotta Gall of the New York Times, whose article appeared on July 22, doesn't consider this question; her article, also filed from Kabul, leans heavily on soothing quotes from Donald Rumsfeld and Karzai spokesman Said Tayab Jawab. She mentions only that "While Afghanistan's military and police forces remain disparate groupings loyal to individual commanders, security remains precarious throughout the country"--a polite and oddly vague way to describe the huge personal armies held by private warlords and the chaos reigning outside of Kabul, where rapes, murders, looting and robbery by private militias continue, where the largest trucking union is on strike to protest the lack of security (which has cut off large areas of the countryside from an adequate food supply), and where aid workers and doctors have been assaulted, raped, and murdered.

Only at the very end of her article does she hint at the problems within Karzai's government: "The extra security given Mr. Karzai will please many of his supporters, but it has also created tensions in Kabul. The decision has angered some members of the Defense Ministry, which is run by Marshal Muhammad Qasim Fahim, an ethnic Tajik who fiercely guards his position of power in Kabul." She goes on to give a reason for the anger, which has nothing to do with Fahim's drive to guard his position of power: "Some Defense Ministry commandos, who have been responsible for the president's security since his arrival in the capital in December, admitted that they were unhappy about the takeover by Americans because it would make the president appear even more in the American pocket."

Hhm. "In the American pocket," eh? This hints at the problems encountered by delegates at the Loya Jirga and the undemocratic way Karzai and his US advisors handled his reappointment. Gall admits that there is a perception in Kabul that Karzai wasn't democratically elected, but she leaves it at that. She certainly doesn't discuss the rivalry between Karzai and Fahim, but skirts around the unpleasant truth.

Later articles seem to stray further from this key point. An LA Times article on July 23, written by Greg Miller in Washington DC, is dominated by Rumsfeld quotes. And on July 25, Reuters wire service finally weighs in with an anemic piece with no byline. It contains the obligatory Rumsfeld quotes, more soothing quotes from an Afghan Interior Ministry security chief, and less information than any of the other articles to date.

As for our local newspapers, the Post-Intelligencer ran a story entitled "US gives Afghan leader a palace guard" under the "P-I News Services" byline--a signal that it was pieced together by a P-I staff writer from numerous sources. Instead of being a tasty selection of the best paragraphs from Stojanovic's original story, the P-I chose to crib the worst bits from Carlotta Gall's wimpy New York Times piece.

On the other hand, The Seattle Times chose to reprint a portion of Stojanovic's story. It was a good choice, but the editorial cuts were cowardly. Of the four paragraphs quoted above, the Times ran only the first one and cut the rest, but included the soothing Rumsfeld pap. The overall effect is to downplay the threat from within Karzai's government and play up the threat from Al Qaeda and Taliban remnants.

Finally, on July 24, the Washington Post ran an interesting analysis of the situation: "Rivalry Revived in Afghanistan," written by Susan B. Glasser and filed from Kabul. Glasser details the background of the Karzai/Fahim rivalry and describes the problems with an overly aggressive Afghan secret service with 30,000 employees--all loyal to Fahim.

Glasser firmly places Karzai's request for US bodyguards within its proper context: "But Karzai clearly has become worried about his safety, and this week he asked the US military to provide him with bodyguards and dismissed his Afghan security unit. The Afghan guards were loyal to Fahim." Notably, Glasser's article has not been picked up and widely reprinted, and has not appeared in the Seattle press at all.

Our newspapers have clearly closed ranks to help the "War on Terrorism" and are not interested in the real situation inside Afghanistan. The Afghan central government remains confined to Kabul, has produced only 350 troops so far for its national army (with only another 400 or so undergoing basic training), and the undemocratic inclusion of warlords within Karzai's cabinet has both alienated common Afghanis and created a security nightmare that has set the nation on the road to another civil war. In the meantime, stories calling for increasing the presence of international security troops within the provinces and increasing the amount of aid dollars have found no venue.

We could easily blame George W. Bush and his administration for failures in Afghanistan, but the US press is equally to blame and should feel shame for its inattention to this critical story.