Afghan President, Besieged by Crises, To Meet With Bush

By Pamela Constable
Washington Post Foreign Service
Saturday, August 4, 2007; A10

KABUL, Aug. 3 -- As Afghan President Hamid Karzai prepares for a two-day meeting with President Bush at Camp David starting Sunday, his government is confronting contradictory pressures at home and abroad over how to secure the release of 21 surviving South Korean hostages, combat the aggressive Taliban insurgency and rein in Afghanistan's flourishing opium poppy trade.

Bush administration officials have described the meeting as a private "strategy session" between partners and a chance to reiterate unwavering U.S. support for Karzai's beleaguered government. But here, analysts and politicians say that in return for providing $10 billion in aid and more than 20,000 troops, U.S. officials may be pushing Karzai to take or accept harsh actions that many Afghans adamantly oppose.

The most urgent issue is what to do about the Taliban, the once-defeated radical Islamic militia that has roared back to life as a power-hungry, media-savvy guerrilla force. It is taking ever more audacious actions -- such as kidnapping 23 Korean church volunteers on a bus July 19 -- while moving ever closer to this tense capital in its campaign to drive out foreign troops and restore strict Islamic rule.

Karzai, a genial diplomat from a country of tribal traders, has always preferred to negotiate his way out of problems. He has repeatedly called on Taliban fighters to reconcile with his government, and he is attempting to solve the current hostage crisis through tribal mediation. Many Afghans, exhausted by years of conflict and angry at repeated civilian casualties during foreign strikes against the Taliban, support a negotiated peace with insurgents.

But U.S. officials have rejected this approach, especially in hostage situations. Administration spokesmen say pressure must be applied on the Taliban to secure the Koreans' freedom, including the possible use of force. Two hostages have been killed, and Taliban officials are demanding the withdrawal of 210 South Korean troops and the release of a group of imprisoned insurgents in exchange for the hostages' lives.

"It is really difficult to know what to do," said Nader Nadery, president of the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission. "The government can't give in to the Taliban's demands, or they will be encouraged to repeat the same terrorist actions. But the Taliban are already winning the psychological war, delaying the hostage situation to gain time and public attention."

Although the insurgents are not strong enough to defeat pro-government forces, he said, "their psychological presence is everywhere. With every incident, somehow they win."

In recent months, the Taliban has made its presence felt in widening swaths of territory, moving farther out of its traditional base in the south and into provinces ringing the capital. Taliban fighters have seized the Koreans and executed local judges in Ghazni province, killed schoolgirls in Logar province and abducted two German engineers in Wardak province, killing one.

Officials are especially alarmed by the growing insurgent presence in Wardak, a poor region of fields and orchards just southwest of Kabul. As recently as April, there was no sign of insurgents in the region. Now, officials said, Taliban fighters hold armed meetings in village mosques and send threatening letters that force girls' schools to shut down.

Many people in Wardak blame the Karzai government for multiple failures that have spawned the Taliban revival. They said that promised roads and schools were never built, local authorities are corrupt and security is abysmal, with as few as four poorly trained policemen per district.

"The government has lost the confidence of our people, and the Taliban are getting more powerful," said Roshanak Wardak, a rural obstetrician and member of parliament from Wardak. "A lot of our boys have no jobs or education. The Taliban pay them and tell them the Americans have come to erase Islam from their country. I am very much worried," she added. "If the Taliban get power again in our province, it is only one leap to the capital."

U.S. diplomats and analysts repeatedly have expressed concern, saying that the Karzai government needs a stronger presence outside Kabul, providing better services and security in poor areas that are vulnerable to Taliban blandishments. State Department officials said Karzai and Bush will discuss the need to assert central authority in rural areas.

Much of the U.S. military's emphasis here, however, remains on killing or capturing insurgents, and American military officials are skeptical of efforts to negotiate with the Taliban. But energetic pursuit of insurgents has produced another problem -- a mounting toll of civilian casualties, mostly in bombing raids. The deaths have inflamed public opinion, turned many Afghans against the foreign forces and further strained Karzai's credibility.

"Sooner or later, every liberating force becomes an occupying force," said one Western analyst here. "A majority of Afghans were glad to see the coalition arrive in 2001, and most of them still are, but collateral damage and cultural insensitivity are key issues here. Even if the Taliban are using civilians as human shields, in the court of public opinion it is still the foreign forces that killed them."

The third issue in which Karzai faces contradictory pressures is how to stop the spread of opium poppy cultivation and trafficking. The crop has grown to record levels since the overthrow of the Taliban, which had banned it in 2000. The drug trade has become economically intertwined with the revived insurgency.

The Bush administration, which largely ignored Afghanistan's poppy problem for several years while concentrating on hunting down Taliban and al-Qaeda fighters, is now extremely worried about the trade's role in shoring up the new Taliban. Richard A. Boucher, the senior State Department official for South Asia, said this week that "the tie between insecurity and poppy production is more and more clear," as are the links between the drug crop and the Taliban insurgency.

But U.S. and Afghan officials differ on the cure. The United States endorses aerial crop spraying and aggressive eradication along with alternative agricultural programs and better law enforcement. But Karzai has rejected the harsher eradication methods in the face of threatened revolts by farmers and public opposition.

"If Karzai comes under a lot of pressure to spray, it would be a big mistake," said Paul Fishstein, executive director of the nonprofit Afghanistan Research and Evaluation Unit here. "It would provide the Taliban with a huge propaganda gift. It would be perceived by farmers as a hostile act and it would further alienate them from the government. It might work as a way to destroy a crop, but if you really want to win hearts and minds in Afghanistan, it would have the opposite effect."