“Leveling the playing field” in Afghanistan’s upcoming election

Mahmood Karzai, the older brother of Afghan President Hamid Karzai, and the first vice chairman of the Afghanistan chamber of commerce, spoke at the National Press Club today. The subject of the elder Karzai’s presentation? “How to address corruption in Afghanistan and economic solutions.”

The topic is relevant to the Obama administration’s hopes for Afghanistan, where it has recently outlined its plans to increase its military and political commitment, as well as its frustrations with the Karzai government. Some of the Karzai brothers’ business activities have been a key point of friction.

“An immigrant waiter-turned-restaurant owner … Mahmoud Karzai has major interests in the country’s only cement factory, its dominant bank, its most ambitious real estate development, its only Toyota distributorship and four coal mines,” the New York Times recently reported. “He has collected millions in American government loans for real estate developments in Kandahar and Kabul, capitalized on a friendship with Jack Kemp, the former Republican congressman, for introductions to American officials and international business executives, and benefited from what his rivals charge were sweetheart deals with the Afghan government. Mr. Karzai’s swift rise has stirred resentment and suspicion among many Afghans, who have grown disaffected with the Karzai government and its seeming tolerance for insider dealing, favor trading, bribe taking and other unsavory activities.”

Another Karzai half-brother, Ahmed Wali Karzai, “has been accused of narcotics trafficking by Afghan and American officials, who are frustrated that the president has not taken action against him,” the Times further reported.

Washington’s frustration with the Afghan president has periodically spilled into public view. Last year, then Senate Foreign Relations committee chairman Joseph Biden reportedly walked out of a dinner with Karzai, saying, “This meeting is over.” Sources describe a second “testy” dinner between Biden and Karzai this past January, when Biden traveled to Afghanistan in his capacity as vice president-elect.

Biden just doesn’t feel that Karzai is being honest with him, a South Asia hand explained. “The U.S. government broadly and a number of people in Barack-world feel Karzai is unreliable — he says one thing to the Americans, and another to the Afghans. He never gets serious about corruption. … [H]e doesn’t deliver on any promise he makes, and that it’s never going to change.”

(Rumor has it that U.S. special representative to Afghanistan and Pakistan Richard Holbrooke may have had his own dustup with Karzai at the recent Afghanistan conference at The Hague earlier this month, although the evidence is sketchy. Karzai left the Netherlands without giving a final press conference, as expected. Holbrooke, too, departed before Clinton made her final press appearance. An earlier background briefing with a senior U.S. official accompanying Clinton on the trip was mysteriously canceled after reporters had waited in the room an hour for it. Asked by CBS’s Lara Logan about signs of tensions between the U.S. and Afghan delegations at the conference, Clinton demured, saying, “I just don’t feel that at all. I think that every signal we’ve had, both before coming here and here at the conference in the public statements as well as in our private meetings have been very positive.”)

“The Bush administration had a much closer relationship with the [Karzai] government not only because it helped set it up under UN auspices but also over time, because personal relationships were established,” a former Afghan diplomat said on condition of anonymity. “There were weekly and then monthly conference calls between Bush and Karzai and lots of follow up between… All of this has changed quite radically,” with the change of administrations in Washington.

The Obama team isn’t planning a dump Karzai movement. It would, however, “like to level the playing field,” in advance of the elections currently scheduled for August, one administration South Asia hand said on condition of anonymity.

Karzai’s term is due to end in May, and an Afghan court has determined that he can stay on the job after that until the August elections are held.

“The U.S. wants it to be a wide open election,” a former U.S. official knowledgeable about South Asia said. “But whenever they have told some would-be candidate, ‘Yes, you should run,’ the person interprets that as backing. People are busily running around saying, ‘Holbrooke has given me backing,’ when that’s not the case.”

White House spokesman Robert Gibbs was asked by reporters aboard Air Force One en route to Mexico today about meetings Holbrooke is apparently scheduled to have next week with a slate of Afghan presidential candidates who have been invited to Washington. Gibbs said he didn’t yet know if the president would meet with the invited candidates.

At a recent Marine Corps conference, U.S. military officials said among their chief goals for 2009 was to facilitate Afghanistan’s holding of successful, free, and fair elections.

The Washington Post previously reported that former U.S. diplomat Timothy Carney had been tapped by the Obama administration to lead a U.S. team preparing for Afghanistan’s elections.

Another former U.S. official said it is his understanding that the Obama administration would conduct another review of U.S. policy toward Afghanistan and Pakistan in the fall. That review might be more consequential than the recently unveiled one, which was based in large part on a situation the new administration had inherited rather than an assessment of the effects of its current policies.

FILE PHOTO: SHAH MARAI/AFP/Getty Images