Karzai shows true colors

BY: Peter Hartcher Sydney Morning Herald political and international editor

Hamid Karzai's criticism of Australian troops on the weekend was an intolerable attack from an intolerable leader. First, it appears that the President of Afghanistan was wrong on the facts. About 60 Australian troops and 80 Afghan National Army soldiers jointly conducted a night raid on the village of Sola in the Tarin Kowt district of Oruzgan Province on Friday night, according to Australian officials. They were searching for the Afghan soldier who had betrayed his army and colleagues by turning his gun on the Australian troops who had been training his unit. The turncoat, a sergeant named Hekmatullah, killed three Australians from 3RAR and wounded two others. Advertisement It was the latest in an escalating series of attacks from within. The military parlance for them is ''green on blue''; green represents Afghan forces and blue international forces. In the course of the raid, the Australians detained about a dozen Afghans, shot and killed two - a village elder and his son - held one other and released the rest. Karzai ''condemned'' the Australian pursuit mission as ''not authorised'', according to a statement issued by his office. He announced a ''full and all-out probe'' into the ''violation''. The Karzai statement said that the two villagers killed by the Australians were not insurgents - they ''had no relationship with the government or militants''. So was the operation ''not authorised''? The International Security Assistance Force, the formal name for the NATO-led coalition, said in a statement that ''the operation was planned and executed in co-ordination with Afghan officials, including approval by the Oruzgan provincial governor''. An ISAF spokesman, Adam Wojak, said the local police chief, Matiullah Khan, had also been informed. So it seems Karzai was misinformed. The Australian Defence Minister, Stephen Smith, said yesterday that it was a misunderstanding. If we accept that, we still have to wonder why Karzai would so vociferously condemn the raid and announce an inquiry that was plainly prejudged. On the face of it, Karzai was not acting in good faith. And then there is the identity of the village man taken prisoner and the two shot dead. ISAF says Khan positively identified the dead men as insurgents. And ISAF said that the man kept in detention ''is confirmed to be an IED [improvised explosive device] emplacer and was previously involved in kidnapping, murder and attacks on [the] Afghan National Security Forces. At the time of his capture, he was attempting to support and move the insider threat shooter who killed three Australian soldiers and wounded two on [August] 29''. There can be legitimate disagreement over the definition of an insurgent. And the killed Afghans were members of the Popalzai tribe, the tribe to which Karzai belongs, so perhaps that was a factor in his reaction. But overall, we're left with the distinct impression that Karzai is more interested in political posturing than in seeking the facts or in pursuing the Afghan turncoat. This is the same man who stole the 2009 presidential election. His challenger withdrew in protest. The international coalition accepted the result with a straight face. But one US diplomat working in the United Nations at the time, Peter Galbraith, spoke out in disgust, saying that the election had been a ''train wreck'', that as many as 30 per cent of Karzai's votes were fraudulent and that the UN had helped cover up the stolen election to protect Karzai. The UN sacked Galbraith in response. And this is the same Karzai who presides over one of the most outrageously corrupt regimes on the planet. The declared value of cash being carried out of Afghanistan through airports last year was $US4.6 billion ($4.45 billion) last year. The amount that went undeclared is anyone's guess. And this is in a country with a national government budget of $4.8 billion a year. ''Afghan officials believe many of the brick-sized stacks of $100 bills stuffed into boxes, bags and suitcases by Dubai-bound passengers belong to drug lords or criminal cartels,'' reported the Financial Times. Or top officials. A former Karzai vice-president, Ahmad Zia Masood, was once stopped at Dubai Airport carrying $US52 million out of Afghanistan in cash, according to a cable published by WikiLeaks. He was allowed to go without questioning. Foreign governments and aid agencies take the money in to help Afghanistan; Afghan leaders take it out again to enrich themselves. The New York Times reports matter-of-factly that ''the extensive web of Karzai family members have leveraged the President's position to put them at the centre of a new oligarchy of powerful Afghan families''. All of this, plus much more, makes Karzai an intolerable figure. He adds insult to the injury suffered by the men and women from around the world who fight and die in a 50-nation effort to turn this benighted country from ungoverned terrorist training camp to governed territory. So should Australia quit this intolerable government and its intolerable President in this intolerable shooting zone called Afghanistan? The tactic of the Afghan turncoat troops, the green-on-blue attacks, is like the terrorism the Afghan mission was conceived to address. It's tempting to say that Australian forces should leave now. It would certainly save the lives of some Diggers. But to pull out now, after 11 years, and two years before the declared Australian and international timeline, would be a serious blow to Australia's national credibility, as the Minister for Foreign Affairs, Bob Carr, has pointed out. It would mean Australia was a country that could not keep its international commitments, a country that could be panicked by a handful of terrorists, a country that shrugs its shoulders after a decade of considered policy and the deaths of 38 of its soldiers and says it was all just a waste of time. To stay on and fight in Karzai's Afghanistan is intolerable. To make a panicked exit now is even more so. Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/politics/pulling-out-even-more-intolerable-than-karzai-20120903-25add.html#ixzz25TOa7txn