KABUL – The Pentagon’s top military officer followed his commander in chief to Kabul yesterday to keep pressure on President Hamid Karzai over corruption, which he said could ruin the war’s new strategy.
Adm Mike Mullen, chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, arrived less than a day after President Barack Obama made the first trip of his presidency there, bringing a stern message that Mr Karzai needs to do more to eliminate graft.
Mr Obama’s strategy of sending 30,000 extra troops this year enters its most ambitious military phase in the coming months in the Taliban’s birthplace Kandahar, where the top provincial official is Mr Karzais half-brother, Ahmad Wali Karzai.
President Obama’s six-hour visit to Afghanistan was his first in the nearly 15 months since he took office. His administration has had a cool relationship with Mr Karzai from the outset, and a perception in the United States that the Afghan president’s government is corrupt has hurt support for the war back home.
Mr Obama said that while there had been military progress, progress needed to be made in fighting corruption and improving how Afghanistan was governed.
Adm Mullen said the entire strategy could fail if Mr Karzai did not do more to fight corruption in his sibling’s fiefdom. “We will be unable to succeed in Kandahar if we cannot . . . set up a legitimate governance structure. If we can’t do that there, then we will not be able to succeed. We can succeed militarily, but it’s not going to work. That’s just a fact.”
Asked if Ahmad Wali Karzai should be sidelined, Adm Mullen said: “I think thats something that President Karzai’s going to have to figure out . . . addressing the corruption and governance issues in Kandahar. It’s not for us to figure out.”
The admiral also played down the chances of a political deal with the Taliban, saying gains were needed on the battlefield first, a point also made in recent weeks by defence secretary Robert Gates.
“I think it is premature. There’s no one that I’ve spoken to, at least on the American side, or actually, on the coalition side, that doesn’t think we need to proceed from a position of strength . . . In my judgment, we’re not there yet.”
Mr Karzai’s office revealed this week that the president had received a delegation of Hezb-i-Islami, one of the insurgent factions that rivals the Taliban. Mr Karzai is also holding a peace conference in Kabul in early May.
A particular concern for Pentagon war planners is Mr Karzai’s reluctance to curtail the role of his half-brother, who heads Kandahar’s provincial council.
Ahmad Wali Karzai has long been under scrutiny because of reports linking him to Afghanistan's heroin and opium trade, charges he denies. The New York Timeshas reported he is also on the payroll of the CIA, which the US spy agency has neither confirmed nor denied.
Adm Mullen described Kandahar as Afghanistan’s “centre of gravity” and the key to reversing the Taliban’s momentum this year, Mr Obamas goal when he ordered the deployment of 30,000 more troops in December to lay the ground for a gradual withdrawal starting in mid-2011.
Gen Stanley McChrystal, commander of US and Nato forces in Afghanistan, envisions a gradual campaign in Kandahar.
In addition to cleaning up Afghan governance, Mr Obama’s strategy hinges on building up the country’s army and police forces to take over security responsibility, a process that has been hamstrung by a shortage of international trainers.
The US has struggled to convince its Nato allies in Afghanistan to fill the shortfall, and Adm Mullen said one option might be to send more US trainers to fill the gap. “We’ve asked and pushed our other partners . . . We’ve come up short a few hundred,” Adm Mullen said. – (Reuters)