A Karzai Victory Is Just the Ticket for Regional Commanders

MAZAR-E SHARIF, Afghanistan -- President Hamid Karzai is considered a strong favorite to win reelection when Afghans go to the polls this summer. But here in northern Afghanistan, one of the country's most peaceful regions, there is little doubt who will be in control when the elections are over, and it's not Karzai.

Rather, it is the same men who have ruled this territory off and on for decades, regional commanders who have divvied up the land into personal fiefdoms and transformed central government institutions, including the police, into instruments of their will.

With two months to go until the vote, most of these commanders -- critics call them warlords -- are lining up to endorse the president's reelection bid. Analysts say that if Karzai secures another term, the commanders who supported the president are likely to be rewarded with a guarantee of continued power.

The enduring influence of these strongmen reflects the fragility of the U.S.-backed government, which remains a government in name only across vast stretches of the country, even those not beset by Taliban insurgency. Indeed, the commanders' loyalty to the president seems to owe less to Karzai's strength as a leader than to his weakness.

"Who else would they support? They've lived a life of luxury under his government," said Golalai Nur Safi, a member of parliament who represents an area just outside Mazar-e Sharif, a desert metropolis on the Central Asian plains. "They see personal advantage in supporting him."

Safi is backing Karzai's reelection because she thinks he "is a good man who has a bad team" and because she sees no viable alternative. She is an outspoken critic of the commanders and of Karzai's pattern of caving in to their demands whenever he wants to shore up his position.

It was clearly illustrated this spring when Karzai picked two regional strongmen to serve as his running mates. The selection of one in particular, Mohammed Fahim, rankled critics. It was a direct reversal of Karzai's decision before the 2004 election to dump from his ticket the much-feared Tajik commander, who was then considered so power-hungry that U.S. officials worried he would launch a coup.

At the time, purging Fahim from the government was hailed as a watershed decision by the president to take a stand against Afghanistan's decades-long tradition of warlordism. Now, it strikes many observers as a rare moment of courage amid a much longer record of appeasing a rogues' gallery of human rights abusers.

"Where we stand today with the political landscape is not much different from where we started, and in some respects it's looking even worse," said Ahmad Nader Nadery, head of the Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission. "These so-called leaders are able to tell the disillusioned people that there's no other way, that 'we have access to the president, and you have to listen to us.' "

A Karzai spokesman, Hamid Zada, defended his leader's vice presidential picks as a way of bringing reconciliation to the long-fractured country. In a nation bitterly divided by ethnicity, Karzai's ticket includes a Pashtun (himself), a Tajik (Fahim) and a Hazara (Karim Khalili). "The president makes all his decisions based on the national unity of Afghanistan," Zada said.

The selections, he added, are also intended to pay tribute to the millions of Afghans who resisted Soviet occupation during the 1980s. "Fahim and Khalili represent a significant group of Afghans who fought the Soviets and paid the price," he said.

Karzai himself has never been a commander. Before his selection to lead Afghanistan in December 2001, he was a tribal chief and a diplomat who was known for his ability to mediate conflicts, not order men into battle.