Karl Carlile: >[acting Afghan leader] Karzai's existence as the leading figure in the interim government is based on the military invasion of Afghanistan by imperialism. His present political existence has its social base in Washington. His social base is not the Afghanistani masses which is why he makes for a fragile political figure. His current policies are evidence of this -- support for continued US air strikes and indefinite presence of imperialist armed forces in Afghanistan...<
To say he has no social base among the Afghan masses is much too strong: after all, Karzai is a Pushtun chief and tribalism is the main kind of political organization there (outside the state itself). He is allied with and supported by similar men. Further, though the US engaged in military invasion in a moral sense, it hardly did so in a military way. The number US of ground troops there is pretty small (say, compared to the Soviet troops that were once in Afghanistan). The fact is that the invasion was mostly using strategic bombing, which is very effective at killing & terrorizing civilians, but cannot conquer a nation alone. Without a significant number of ground troops, strategic bombing is likely to have "Battle of Britain" type effects, i.e., mobilizing resistance. This means that the success of the US military presence (where "success" is as defined by the US power elite) is highly dependent on the military might of the Northern Alliance and other so-called "opposition" forces (i.e., anti-Talibs and erstwhile Talibs who've turned their coats). This dependence means that Karzai -- or at least the more militarily powerful of the new Afghan regime as a group -- have some ability to call the shots. They aren't mere puppets. This is reinforced by the fact that the US doesn't seem to give a damn about whether Afghanistan degenerates into another civil war or not, leaving the task and costs of "nation building" to the EU and UK. The Afghan leadership has a chance to exploit the competition between the EU/UK forces and the US. However, I'd say that this opportunity is limited. Eventually the big shortfall between the material needs for rebuilding Afghanistan and the amount of resources that the EU/UK/US will supply will mean a real and financial crisis that will put the country under the IMF's thumb. In general, it's a mistake -- as some "third worldists" and dependistas do -- to think of leaders in the poor countries as merely "puppets" or "compradors," ignoring the internal class and ethnic relations there. Jim Devine
