Balancing Acts


Written by Chris Cork • Region • June 2010

10-1 With the coalition forces gearing for a possible assault on Kandahar, this will not be a happy summer for many Afghans but it is not likely to rattle the business interests of the Karzai clan either. The long-telegraphed NATO operation to rid Kandahar of the Taliban is going to be no blitzkrieg, no D-Day, no frontal assault on fixed positions but for some the battle has already begun. Special Forces are reportedly operating in the area tasked to locate and minimize the danger from roadside bombs that the Taliban have used to increasingly deadly effect over the last two years; but the dirtiest of the fighting thus far has been in the salons and drawing rooms of the diplomats and politicians.

Kandahar is the spiritual home of the Taliban, the place they marched out from on what they believed to be a suicide mission to cleanse Afghanistan of the infidel Russians. They won a battle they expected to die losing and found themselves running a country which they lost again - to a different group of infidels - in 2001. Today they still have a spiritual home in Kandahar but they do not control this city of over 500,000 and dislodging them is going to be neither quick nor easy.

Not only the Taliban have their origins in Kandahar - so does President Karzai. He was born there and is particularly sensitive about the consequences of an operation in his ancestral home, an operation he has been distinctly lukewarm about from the outset. He visited the city with General McChrystal in March to assure its residents that without their consent no military operations would be launched there - an assurance that was met with skepticism and some derision. The toll of civilian casualties in the ongoing conflict has long been a bone of contention, and the possibility of the civilian toll rising in a closely-fought urban operation where combatants and civilians are interwoven was uppermost in the minds of the elders that he met. Militarily, it is impossible to give concrete undertakings regarding civilians in this type of battlefield and the stage is set for yet more collateral damage.

Kandahar is pivotal to all three of the major players. The Taliban want to demonstrate their resilience and durability in the face of western firepower - and there is every possibility that they may do that. Their war-fighting techniques have adapted to the asymmetric conflict they are engaged in. They are a skilled opponent and well armed and trained. For the coalition forces, Kandahar is the hinge around which NATO operations in the south and east turn. If they do not hold Kandahar then they do not hold the most active battle area in the entire country, and a failure to win would be seen by both Taliban and the wider Afghan populace as an overall loss. For President Karzai it is not just about a battle for his birthplace, it is about his control of his own axis of power and his extremely fragile grip on relationships in the south of the country he nominally rules. He is still smarting at the way in which his younger half-brother Ahmad Wali Karzai was sidelined after allegations relating to his links with the drug trade and the Taliban were repeatedly voiced, as well as his alleged involvement in the vote-rigging that tainted the 2009 elections.

Selling the Kandahar operation as being a cooperative effort as General David Petraeus has done, has something of a hollow ring to it. "The elected leader of a sovereign country and the commander in chief of his armed forces is the one who will give the go-ahead, the direction for any operation. None of these operations are unilateral; obviously it is a partnership. Neither side can move without the other" says Petraeus, doubtless with his fingers crossed behind his back. Protocol dictates that at some point in the near future President Karzai is going to have to give the go-ahead - but as one western military official put it..."the train has already left the station." Unfortunately, nobody heard the station-master blow the whistle telling it to do so.

Kandahar will be no Marjah. No air operations as a precursor, not so much a clearance operation as a 'take-hold-consolidate' move that is made up of a weave of tribal relationships, inclusivity and transparency - the latter two being in short supply in Afghanistan. General McChrystal has said that this type of counterinsurgency operation takes place over a long period of time and may not have a 'defining moment' at which the battle can be said to be lost or won. He is clear, however, that clearing the Taliban from Kandahar is central to winning the war in Afghanistan. He may have the military muscle to achieve a 'win' but getting a 'win' outside of the military bubble is going to be infinitely more difficult.

Specifically, he also needs to win another power battle - that of the supply of electricity to the city. It would, goes the reasoning, be a good idea to get Kandahar lit before using the city as a battlefield. There are two approaches to this. The McChrystal approach is to buy $200 million-worth of generators and several million gallons of diesel fuel and get the city quickly illuminated. The U.S. ambassador's plan is to refurbish the Kajaki dam in Helmand province and put 150 megawatts into the national grid. The populace is reportedly split on the matter, but local opinion would seem to be that fixing the power problem may deal with part of the 'hearts and minds' operation but unless either is sustainable post-war then it is no fix at all - and Afghans are not that easily bought or swayed.

One place that General McChrystal is almost certainly not going to be flagging a win is in the arena where the Karzai clan plays out its intrigues and power-plays. There is a perception that the Karzai Popalzai clan may have caused an imbalance in the delicate tribal structures of Kandahar. They have never been a unified entity and are fiercely competitive in a place where guns and drugs are the currency of political power. It appears that the Karzai family as a part of the Popalzai clan - which is a part of the Durrani confederacy - gained an ascendancy by building a commercial and political empire, the head of which was Ahmad Wali Karzai who became the principal powerbroker able to influence and undermine other tribes. Thus, far from being a rock on which to build, President Karzai and his extended family in the Kandahar area are a source of friction that makes it difficult for NATO to form meaningful or durable alliances.

Removing Ahmad Wali Karzai from the equation has done little more than add to the instability. Hitherto, the balance in Kandahar had been maintained by the small Mohammadzai clan of the Durrani confederacy but with the balance disturbed by the ambitious Karzai's few can predict the tribal or political shape of Kandahar post-operation.

The smiles and handshakes at the end of Karzai's recent visit to Washington are no indicator of the true nature of how he is perceived by America and NATO. His reputation has dropped sharply in the last year as he is seen to preside over a country wracked by rampant corruption and nepotism. His control is limited and not for nothing is he known as 'The Mayor of Kabul'. A recent U.S. Department of Defence document puts it bluntly..."Only a quarter of what is regarded as key regions in Afghanistan support the government of President Hamid Karzai." It is against this background that the Kandahar operation slowly winds up, to be fully 'in gear' by sometime in June. It is going to be a long, messy and unhappy summer for many Afghans; a fact unlikely to much affect the business interests of the Karzai clan.