KABUL - High-profile Republican officials visiting Afghanistan this week told the media in Kabul that US President Obama's plan to withdraw US troops starting in July 2011 is a mistake that will only serve to reinforce the Taliban and al-Qaeda. But while senior US and other Western officials may oppose the speedy timeline for withdrawal, Afghan President Hamid Karzai's government appears to be eagerly awaiting it. “Western countries in Afghanistan are like a stick in our ass that won't allow us to sit comfortably,” the Afghan President recently told a private gathering of ministers, according to reliable sources who attended the meeting. "It was our mistake to let them get involved so deeply," he said. "We have to remove this stick." For some Western countries, continuing the war on terror in Afghanistan it is necessary to establish long-lasting peace in the region and bring an end to global terrorism. But, in the eyes of Afghans and especially President Karzai, this fight has a different meaning. The 'Talib' who have been fighting against the Afghan government and NATO are actually ordinary Pashtuns from both Afghanistan and Pakistan. They want to establish their own territory in Vazirestan and the Frontier district between Pakistan and Afghanistan; they also want total control over the government in Kabul. Ethnicity and race are still major issues in Afghanistan, where most extremist fighters are actually fighting on behalf of their own ethnicity with the hope that it will triumph over the other ethnicities, becoming the ethnicity that runs the nation. President Karzai is an ethnic Pashtun who has always said that his government does not differentiate between race, sect or ethnicity. But his office is dominated by Pashto speakers who are mostly from his own tribe. There is not one single Tajik, Hazarah, Uzbek "not even one Farsi speaker" working in the President's private office. Karzai may prefer to have his ethnic counterparts working in his private office, perhaps because he trusts them more, but he hasn't been able to expand this policy into major governmental posts. He wants to avoid sharing power with others, but there is pressure from the international community to prevent him from succeeding in this. Karzai's allies in the West have become increasingly frustrated with the Afghan President's mismanagement. They hoped that the Afghan people would elect a new president in last summer's presidential elections. It would be easier to work with a fresh face, foreign diplomats told me during interviews in Kabul. But there was far more fraud in last August's election than people expected, and Karzai remains in power. His controversial presidency was accepted by the internationalcommunity, in order to try and prevent Karzai's many corrupt supporters causing more problems. But the instability and insecurity in the country have only increased, while Karzai's intense efforts to hold talks and arrive at an agreement with the Taliban and Pakistan at any price have shocked some members of the Afghan parliament and even the heads of some Pashtun tribes. "Afghanistan's police and security forces are capable of defeating the Taliban, but [the actions of] Pakistan and terrorism have weakened their will to fight," said former intelligence chief Amrollah Saleh in a recent interview in Kabul. “Those who support peace talks with Pakistan and the Taliban think that if we surrender, then maybe they will respect this," said the 37-year old Afghan, who resigned from his governmental post in June. "I'm not defending our failures, but if we surrender, surely they'll kill more people."
Entekhanifard is a New York-based correspondent of The Egyptian Gazette, currently visiting Afghanistan.
