LATELY, Afghanistan’s president, Hamid Karzai, has shown a genius for doing exactly the wrong thing for the Afghan people and their fledgling democracy.
He has been asking, indeed begging, the Taliban to negotiate with him. Not because the rebels are gaining ground – in fact, more and more of rural Afghanistan is finally seeing the benefits of government. The Taliban’s destructiveness is limited to bombings that kill Afghan civilians and lightly armed Afghan police. Sad, yes, but not a threat to the state.
Part of the problem is Afghanistan’s “friends.” On Thursday, Karzai bowed to German pressure and exchanged five prisoners and, German sources say, a few hundred thousand dollars for the freedom of Rudolf Blechschmidt, a German taken hostage in July, and five Afghans kidnapped with him.
The initial kidnappers seem to have been radicalized gangsters unaffiliated with the Taliban’s leadership. But higher-ups endorsed their act, and the demands grew to include the withdrawal of Germany’s 3,000-some soldiers from Afghanistan.
While the lower house of Germany’s legislature just voted to extend the troops’ stay, the Taliban’s Mullah Omar posted an online statement calling the prisoner release “a great victory.”
But the reason lots of foreigners have been getting kidnapped is that Karzai has been so willing to negotiate with kidnappers – and European governments have been even more willing.
The day after Blechschmidt’s abduction, another group calling itself Taliban kidnapped 23 South Korean missionaries nearby. Two were executed before South Korea’s government cut a still secret deal for the release of the other 21. Taliban officials have claimed that $10 million paid by South Korea for the release of their citizens is being used to fund operations both in Afghanistan and overseas.
In March, the Afghan government exchanged five Taliban prisoners for an Italian journalist, under heavy pressure from Italy’s government. Karzai refused to trade prisoners for the life of the journalist’s young Afghan fixer, whom the Taliban promptly murdered.
No Americans have been kidnapped in Afghanistan – probably because the Taliban and other criminal gangs know that our government won’t negotiate with thugs or even consider withdrawing our troops there under duress. Indeed, the kidnappings are plainly meant to drive a wedge between our wavering Coalition partners and us.
Bowing to kidnappers’ demands is always a bad idea, because it encourages more kidnapping. That’s why it’s illegal in many countries for the relatives of a kidnap victim to pay a ransom. (The very severe U.S. penalties have virtually eliminated kidnappings for ransom here.)
But negotiating with kidnappers is an even worse idea in a country like Afghanistan, where the government’s ability to maintain a monopoly on force is just now being established.
Afghanistan has never had a central government whose writ ran throughout the land. It still doesn’t, but it’s getting nearer day by day, mainly because Coalition troops are building roads connecting Afghanistan’s districts to major highways and establishing combat outposts farther and farther out into the rugged countryside. The last thing the Afghans need is a president who undermines his own authority – and allies who push him to do so.
What Karzai should have done the first time the Taliban asked for a prisoner exchange is said no and then added, “And by the way, we really appreciate the list of prisoners you want released. If you haven’t returned the hostages you took within 24 hours, we will kill these prisoners one by one.”
But that would have taken a decisiveness and courage that Karzai has never shown and an understanding of what a government is supposed to do.
Karzai may think he can’t afford to antagonize Coalition nations or endanger foreigners working to help the people of Afghanistan. But, in reality, negotiating with kidnappers makes life much more dangerous for non-American foreigners there.
The president’s overtures to the Taliban have nothing to do with their strength, only with his weakness. Perhaps he’s angling to win fundamentalist votes in the 2009 election (toleration of corruption among his intimates and appointment of fundamentalists to high positions having lost him the respect of Afghanistan’s progressives).
But it’s a bad bet: The Taliban are overwhelmingly unpopular in Afghanistan, even in Helmand and Kandahar Provinces, where the Afghan government’s opium-eradication policy is resented. According to an ABC/BBC poll done last year, 89 percent of Afghans view the Taliban unfavorably and 93 percent doubt it can provide them with security.
Karzai seems unable to appreciate or to make the world understand that his people have been doing a great job of growing their way out of poverty, vindicating the trust we placed in them when we tossed the Taliban out.
Afghanistan is still poor, but it’s been making spectacular progress, with its economy GDP growing at a clip above 9 percent a year since 2003. An International Monetary Fund review in July noted that “economic developments in 2006/7 have been generally favorable,” with progress in fighting inflation (down to 4.8 percent) and collecting taxes – even as bank deposits have grown, as has currency in circulation.
The Afghan people are doing it for themselves, with help from our military and our economic advisers. But they need a resolute government that upholds the law and punishes those who transgress it. Our allies shouldn’t be undermining Aghan resolve: Their governments should refuse to deal with kidnappers – unless they are proud of handing the Taliban “a great victory.”
Ann Marlowe has been visiting Afghanistan regularly since 2002 and was embedded with the U.S. Army in eastern Afghanistan in July.