Crazy Karzai?

Not like a fox--or maybe so. The Afghan president sure is stirring the pot:

President Obama's visit to Kabul last week, intended in part to forge a closer working relationship with President Hamid Karzai, has helped produce the opposite: an angry Afghan leader now attacking the West for what he perceives as an effort to manipulate him and weaken his rule.

Karzai's relationship with his U.S. backers in the past week has taken a sharp turn for the worse after his two anti-Western speeches in three days, remarks that some officials see as a rehearsed, intentional move away from the United States.

In remarks to parliament members Saturday, Karzai said that if foreign interference in his government continues, the Taliban would become a legitimate resistance -- one that he might even join, according to lawmakers present.

In a sign of the intensifying war of words with the Afghan leader, White House officials expressed dismay Monday over Karzai's weekend comments.

Karzai's threat to join the Taliban rather than bow to what he described as foreign interference came after an anti-Western rant late last week. Press secretary Robert Gibbs called Karzai's statements "genuinely troubling" but said the U.S. government would continue to work with Karzai and others in his government as they seek to secure the country.

Gibbs said, "It was disturbing on Friday. Obviously it didn't get any better."..

On the other hand the fellow has to deal with his own country's realities. From an excellent piece in Time magazine:

To some it may seem as if President Hamid Karzai has a death wish. The Afghan leader has lately begun sticking it to the U.S. and its Western allies — the only force protecting him from a surging Taliban...

But bizarre as his behavior may seem, there may be a method in Karzai's madness. For one thing, he has begun denouncing the Western powers in his country because he knows he can — Karzai would have been cut adrift some time ago if there were any other viable alternative on whom the U.S. could pin its strategy...

Karzai...knows that the U.S. commitment in his country is finite, and the need to survive after the Americans leave makes him more inclined to rely on such established hard men as Uzbek warlord General Rashid Dostum and Tajik strongman General Mohammed Fahim — even if that means turning a blind eye to their transgressions. He is also keen to take charge of negotiating a political settlement with the Taliban on his own timetable, and with less of a role for Pakistan than Washington might be ready to concede to Islamabad. Just as U.S. influence in Iraq declined precipitously once its intention to withdraw became clear, so is Karzai's game plan premised on getting along without the U.S., even though he'll do his best to keep it there as long as possible. That means going through the motions of satisfying U.S. demands on corruption and reform, without alienating the hard men on whose support he may depend once the Americans leave.

It's a common mistake for great powers to assume that those whom they engage as proxies to fight their battles or run their satrapies share the same agenda as their patrons just because their interests coincide at a given moment. But not all of Karzai's enemies in the region are America's enemies, and not all of America's allies are Karzai's allies. Nowhere is this more true than in the case of Pakistan, the original patron of the Taliban, which has also been going through the motions of indulging American concerns while continuing to enable the Afghan Taliban insurgency and identifying Karzai as an adversary because of his regime's close ties with India.

Like Pakistan over the past eight years, Karzai has been biding his time, positioning himself for the battles and power shifts that will come when the Americans leave, his goal — like Islamabad's — being to protect his power. And the arrival in Washington of the Obama Administration signaled the onset of the endgame. Driven by a desire to conclude America's fiscally burdensome wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and alarmed by the downward security spiral in Afghanistan, the Obama Administration put Karzai on notice that failure to tackle the corruption that was deemed to be fueling the insurgency would jeopardize his ties with Washington. And in the weeks leading up to last August's election, U.S. officials in Afghanistan were widely perceived to be backing rival candidates. Karzai has also noted that key U.S. officials like special envoy Richard Holbrooke have spoken frankly about giving Pakistan a greater role in shaping the political outcome in Afghanistan.

It should come as no surprise, then, that in the endgame, Karzai has revealed an agenda quite distinct from that of Washington — just as Pakistan has done. The premise of the U.S. policy, after all — just like that of the Pakistanis, Karzai, the Taliban and every other player in the game — is that sooner or later, the Americans will leave. And it's that reality, now more than ever, that is shaping everyone's game.