Frustrated with some of his Western allies, in particular the United States, Afghan President Hamid Karzai has begun to reach out to Afghanistan’s giant northern neighbor Russia.
US President Barack Obama has pledged to make Afghanistan his top foreign policy priority and will be unlikely to give Karzai an easy ride, having accused him in the past of failing to get “out of the bunker” and rule effectively.
Karzai, once the darling of the West, is no longer assured of the unwavering support he enjoyed from former President George W. Bush, and European leaders have joined the chorus continually calling for good governance -— more implied criticism of Karzai.
“When Karzai sees his former allies are not in power and the rest criticize him, instead of helping him, then he looks for new allies,” said Shukriya Barakzai, a prominent parliamentarian.
The new allies, she said, were led by Russia, and included neighbors Iran and China who have economic interests in Afghanistan, but also reservations about the presence of foreign troops.
Russian diplomats have said the West was making the same mistakes the Soviet Union made during its ill-fated 10-year occupation of Afghanistan.
On the eve of President Barack Obama’s inauguration, Karzai’s office released a statement saying Moscow had accepted his request for providing defense aid to Afghanistan. Karzai’s chief spokesman played down the importance of the move, saying despite Karzai’s call, Afghanistan was committed to its ties with NATO and the United States, which have nearly 70,000 troops fighting Taleban-led insurgents in the country.
The request by Karzai, facing elections in August, was made last November and the timing of the release of the news of Moscow's acceptance could be no more than just a coincidence.
However, the next day in Parliament, just hours before Obama took office, Karzai, who has led Afghanistan with Western military and financial support since the Taleban's 2001 overthrow, spoke apparently for the first time of his desire for closer ties with Russia.
Days later, as the US ambassador and US commander of NATO troops looked on, Karzai told an army graduation ceremony Afghanistan needed to acquire planes and tanks from anywhere it could after failing to get them from NATO and the United States.
“We told America and the world to give us planes soon and if you do not, we will get them from another place,” Karzai said. “We told them we have become impatient and we cannot live without planes.”
Seven years after swiftly dispatching the Taleban government, Western forces are struggling against insurgent attacks that rose by a third last year and a campaign of suicide bombing that has heightened the sense of insecurity and eroded public trust in the ability of both Karzai's government and NATO to bring security.
Mutual recrimination, though often muted and diplomatically coded, has risen accordingly.
Karzai has repeatedly hit back at Western criticism of his government, endemic official corruption and lack of rule of law, with stinging attacks on the US and NATO record of accidentally killing hundreds of civilians in air strikes.
