Opinion: What has Karzai done for Afghanistan?

Very little, his record on official corruption, curbing poppy production and the Taliban would suggest.

Joel BrinkleyOctober 3, 2009 07:50Updated May 30, 2010 12:09

An Afghan man carries a sheet of iron next to a poster of President Hamid Karzai at his shop in Kabul, Sept. 12, 2009. (Omar Sobhani/Reuters)

Anyone who first meets Hamid Karzai is immediately taken by his sartorial splendor — topped, of course, with his qaracul, that traditional Afghan hat made from the fur of a lamb fetus.

Karzai popularized these hats so that now they sell on the streets of Kabul for up to $35 — 15 percent of an average Afghan’s annual income. But Karzai’s hat is in fact a metaphor for his place in Afghan society. He buys his qaraculs in Paris, where they sell for $650, and he has several of them.

By now everyone knows that Karzai leads a government drowning in opium-fed corruption. Students pay teachers for good grades. Defendants bribe judges for favorable verdicts. Residents pay off city workers for basic services. Transparency International lists only four nations more corrupt than Afghanistan among 180 nations surveyed. Blame for this falls on the opium. Profits from its sale fill the wallets of Taliban insurgents who tax drug revenues at a rate of 10 percent. Last year, the United Nations estimated, the Taliban took in between $50 million and $70 million from these “taxes.” Government officers, meantime, take as much of the remainder as they can get away with.

As the corruption spreads through the economy, the natural question arises: Is Karzai dipping his own hands into the till — or is he a passive observer as most everyone else in his government enriches himself? Neither answer is particularly complimentary.

Behind that question lies the larger one facing Washington: Is Karzai a reliable partner worth fighting for? Or, is the widespread fraud committed during the election in August just another public indication of malfeasance at the very top of Afghanistan’s government? How should all of this play in the debate now underway on a new strategy there.

In other countries, heads of state put their corruption on display by building themselves sumptuous palaces. In Kazahstan, President Nursultan Nazarbayev lives in a massive, blue-domed marble edifice overlooking the capital city with a front hall the size of two basketball courts and 22-foot ceilings. In Cambodia, Prime Minister Hun Sen’s country estate has its own 18-hole golf course.

But in Afghanistan, Karzai lives in a presidential palace that predates him and is actually quite modest compared to many others. The state provides his limousine, and Kabul, one of the world’s poorest capital cities, just doesn’t provide many opportunities for conspicuous consumption.