Steve Coll on Karzai's brother

http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/stevecoll/2010/04/kandahar.html#ixzz0k3JSc7zS

excerpt:

“…Whatever the courtroom-ready evidence against him, there is no question but that A.W.K. is the most visible, most intractable symbol of the corruption and corporate self-interest of the Karzai government in southern Afghanistan. The poison A.W.K. has come to represent spills into everything—including the upcoming provincial elections, which are meant to be a cleansing exercise in political inclusion, but may turn out to be another fraud-and-fix operation by the Karzai southern mafia. (Hamid Karzai’s irrational-sounding outburst last week, in which he suggested that the international community, rather than his half-brother, was responsible for last year’s massive fraud in the presidential election, is probably best understood as a crazy-like-a-fox smoke-blowing exercise designed to create space for A.W.K. as he works the parliamentary vote, which is scheduled for September.) By virtually all of the accounts I’ve heard, there is no single action the international community could insist upon that would have a greater impact on public opinion in Taliban country than the removal of A.W.K. and the replacement of his reign by a visibly more inclusive and less malign political economy. The decision to do this can be postponed. It cannot be avoided.”

by teru kuwayama at 2010-04-03 15:46:33 UTC | Bookmark | | Report spam→