How to Manage Karzai

How to Manage Karzai – Stephen Biddle, Washington Post opinion.

This week’s state visit by Afghan President Hamid Karzai almost wasn’t going to happen. The Obama administration, unhappy with Karzai’s attempt to pack the Afghan Electoral Commission with supporters —to ignore voting fraud, briefly held the visit hostage this spring. This striking move also followed Karzai’s threat to join the Taliban. In the ensuing brouhaha last month much of Washington wondered, loudly, whether Karzai was an adequate partner. This is the wrong question.

Local partners are almost never adequate at the outset — this is why they face insurgencies in the first place. Almost by definition, counterinsurgency implies a problematic host government. If the local leadership were effective already, there would be no insurgency to fight. Nor is the leader the problem. Americans often want to “fix” things by replacing the leader…

More at The Washington Post.