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ANALYSIS-Karzai killing highlights Afghan "strongman" problem

13 Jul 2011 14:29

Source: reuters // Reuters

* Afghan strongmen like Ahmad Wali Karzai control swathes of the country

* Power, wealth undermines state institutions

* Support for strongmen costs Karzai and the West

By Michelle Nichols

KABUL, July 13 (Reuters) - The fears of instability and infighting sparked by the assassination of Afghan President Hamid Karzai's brother are a stark reminder of the country's dangerous reliance on the politics of personalities, not institutions, analysts say.

From parliament to provincial governors offices, swathes of Afghanistan and sections of its government are under the sway of men, and the very occasional woman, whose power derives not from the position they hold but their own past and connections.

Most were military commanders -- warlords to their enemies -- who built up private armies and fortunes during years of civil war and still command the loyalties of their supporters, often mostly from the same ethnic group.

Former Mujahideen commanders with high office in democratic Afghanistan range from Vice President Mohammad Qasim Fahim and the governor of northern Balkh province Atta Mohammad Noor to Army Chief of Staff General Abdul Rashid Dostum.

President Karzai's weak personal power base, after years in exile, made him dependent on deals with these men to shore up his rule; foreign troops and diplomats, looking for a short-cut to a stable Afghanistan, have also supported many of them.

But their role circumvents and undermines the democratic structures that Afghanistan needs to try and leave behind years of a war and cut back rampant, destructive corruption.

Thomas Ruttig, co-director of the Afghanistan Analysts Network, warned international cooperation with the country's strongmen was "a short-cut solution that undermines the legitimate Afghan institutions".

"Afghans seeing (the foreign coalition) working with them and ignoring predatory and violent behaviour, undermines the values on which the international mission is based," he said.

UNUSUAL, PRE-EMINENT

Ahmad Wali Karzai was unusual among the most senior of these leaders in that he spent much of the civil war period in the United States, and only leveraged family connections into power after the fall of the Taliban government.

But he was still pre-eminent in the south -- rich, feared and often known in English simply by his initials, AWK.

He was head of the provincial council in volatile Kandahar -- a largely consultative role which normally carries limited influence -- and claimed to defer to the governor.

But behind the scenes he did not hide his power, based on tribal and family connections and the fortune he accumulated.

He had told a U.S. official "he was the most powerful official in Kandahar and could deliver whatever is needed," according to a leaked U.S. cable made public last year.

Despite many previous assassination attempts, his death on Tuesday at the hands of a senior member of the Karzai family's security team at his home in Kandahar sent huge shockwaves through the region's political system.

Karzai moved quickly to ward off fears of immediate chaos by naming another brother successor to Ahmad Wali Karzai's role as a leader of their Popalzai tribe, but few expected the low-profile engineer could fill his brother's place.

"It's going to be a big vacuum for the West. Who are they going to deal with now -- because none of the governors of the four southern provinces were as powerful as he was," said Pakistani author Ahmed Rashid, who had known Karzai personally.

The United States and Britain had been "extremely dependent" on him for preventing some very prominent Pashtun tribes joining the Taliban, Rashid added.

TAKING STOCK

The death of Ahmad Wali Karzai could be a good moment to take stock on the regional diplomacy of the United States and others in Afghanistan, said Michael O'Hanlon, a senior fellow in foreign policy and defense at the Brookings Institution.

"We should be assessing how well we are distributing our contracts and other resources to various ethnic groups and tribes," he said. "If we continue to prop up just one or two key strongmen, especially in Kandahar, we could be in trouble."

Critics say the seeds of instability were sown early in the rule of Karzai, who was installed as leader of an interim government after U.S.-backed Afghan forces ousted the Taliban.

He formed shifting coalitions with regional strongmen, whose help he needed to win subsequent presidential elections.

"The U.S., the United Nations and Hamid Karzai all espoused 'Big Tent' politics in the belief that the men of violence were less dangerous inside rather than outside the new polity," London-based think tank Chatham House said in a December report.

"Since then the expected transition towards greater rule of law has largely failed to materialise," added the report, which criticised Western appetite for "short-term fixes" to stability challenges in Afghanistan. (Editing by Emma Graham-Harrison)