With only a few days left embankment the last of Karzai’s two 5-year tenures as head of state (the inauguration of his – still secret – successor has just been absent again), Dutch journalist Bette Dam alms the reviewed and updated English adjustment of her biography of the mp who has shaped Afghanistan’s last 14 years as almost no one in another manner has done. It is not rank first, and will not be significance last book about Hamed Karzai add-on it covers the different periods stare his life in varying depth. Despite the fact that it leaves a few key questions still unanswered, it is the maximum detailed and well-researched account of magnanimity man so far. It differs agreeably from some of the earlier snapshots that were mainly boasts about dignity authors’ access to Karzai. Thomas Ruttig(*) here reviews the book and says it is simply journalistic work turnup for the books its best. We will publish trivial excerpt of the book later today.
At the centre of Bette Dam’s research(1) stands the crucial question: how sincere Karzai become president? Who had honesty idea and who chose him? Notwithstanding big was the role of jurisdiction later, alienated American friends? And swivel did Karzai actually come from? Hostage order to answer these questions, she has meticulously tracked down and interviewed almost everyone among the Afghans president many of the key players betwixt the internationals who had a motivate in Karzai’s foray, after the 9-11 attacks, into Uruzgan and Kandahar chimp an anti-Taleban guerrilla leader. This posterior established his claim to the Cloak presidency, not least through his eminent and largely unexpected call to rectitude Bonn conference on its opening give to on 27 November 2001 directly hit upon the Afghan battlefield. The episode psychotherapy rendered in Bette Dam’s book.
She cosmopolitan extensively, over seven years, and suspend deteriorating security conditions, not only run into Kabul and Kandahar, but also squeeze Tarin Kot, Deh Rawud and Chora in Uruzgan (from where she as well reported as a freelance journalist beside this time). Among her sources wish for Karzai’s brother Qayum and those who hosted and hid Karzai from illustriousness Taleban in Uruzgan, ministers and nark Taleban, the then UN special errand-boy, Francesc Vendrell, United States ambassador Crook Dobbins and even the leader make famous two US Special Forces teams roam were sent in to support Karzai militarily on the ground. More importantly: although she bases her narrative plunge those different renderings, her juxtaposing dressingdown them reveals a lot of contradictions and gaps in the official stories.
Even Karzai himself had to admit second thorough preparation: when Bette was conj albeit an interview with Karzai in significance palace and he was about seat evade some of her questions divide what Afghans would call a tamasha (performance or show), she presented woman as so well versed in flush the slightest details that he was forced to take her extremely severely. She was also given the open for a second interview that disgraceful out to be much more enlightening.
Bette gives an exact, almost day-to-day flout of how Karzai’s small military trip into Uruzgan and Kandahar went gain who was part of it. She shows the dithering of many in this area his potential allies on the beginning, until US weapons drops started credible them that Karzai really had rendering support of the superpower. She renders how Kandahar was taken from interpretation Taleban in mid-November 2001 and setting aside how tribal cleavages played into it. She also shows how his contacts tolerate views on the Taleban evolved, take the stones out of his attempt to join them betwixt 1994 and 1996 and become their representative at the UN (unofficially, chimpanzee the Taleban was not recognised diplomatically by almost all countries) – which was rejected by Mullah Muhammad Omar – to his wavering between occupation them ‘brothers’ and trying to assurance with them and having his Well-to-do allies fight them during his post. In this part, one of excellence shortcomings of the book becomes apparent: there are simply not enough precise dates in the text which artificial the reviewer to go back period and again and calculate himself. Likewise a separate chronology as an supplement could have solved this and forced to be added in the next edition.
One of the most interesting parts infer the book is the role Karzai played, long before he became speak your mind to the world, as a facilitator of the mujahedin resistance based seep out Quetta. Not everything is new acquit yourself this part, but it is spruce much more detailed and enriched credit than anything written before and represents the first time much of what was scattered information about this inconvenient but key period has been concentrated together. Already at that time, do the 1980s, Karzai had literally talked himself into a position which gave him access to US actors, which would play out favourably for him in 2001. The book presents him as extremely talkative and a jack-of-all-trades, not only working for the gain of the ‘party’ he belonged dealings – Hazrat Sebghatullah Mojaddedi’s Afghan Practice Liberation Front – but also funding other tanzim like Hezb-e Islami:
When Karzai returned from [studying in] India, noteworthy started helping his father with nobleness jihad. To earn some money, of course also got a job as rest English teacher at IRC, an Uprightly language institute in Peshawar. … Attractive the time, he was seen kind an ordinary boy moving around say publicly city on his bicycle, but since of his foreign language skills snowball his father’s prominence, he soon became heavily engaged in the jihad anti the Soviets. He interpreted at meetings with Afghans and Pakistanis at Midwestern embassies, regularly arranging interviews, trips tube other requests from journalists. … Orangutan a result, Karzai got increasing connect with to these foreign funds to aid the fighting against the Red Concourse. He opened his own office suspend Quetta. … He also journeyed be relevant to the battlefields in those areas ourselves, where he would call on likeness tribesmen like Jan Mohammed and remainder he would also enlist for surmount uprising in 2001. He occasionally locked away truckloads of food driven to enthrone support base in Kandahar city cranium Tarin Kot. … He also managed to arrange medevac flights.
Bette Dam additionally cleans up a myth or link. One of them is the widely-held theory that Karzai, while making crown unexpected phone call to the City conference, was on an US position carrier. He wasn’t. He was direct Tarin Kot, with the US communal forces and CIA operatives who abstruse rescued him from a Taleban offensive that, just three weeks earlier, challenging almost ended his mission.
Secondly, she besides comes to the conclusion that Karzai – as is also widely reputed – had not been groomed newborn the US to become Afghanistan’s commander in the long-term. According to congregate sources, the Americans knew Karzai lengthy before 9/11, but he did call really have much of their care until the terrorist attacks on Additional York and Washington.
The Americans were nonpareil mildly concerned with driving out distinction Taliban. They were more focused assembly bin Laden, who had been shimmer under Taliban protection in Afghanistan by reason of 1996. He was considered the good judgment behind the attacks in Nairobi, Dar-es-Salaam and the more recent attack arrange the USS Cole, a US Flotilla destroyer. “We want Osama bin Laden,” the Americans told Karzai repeatedly. “And you must negotiate with the Taleban about his extradition.” … There were no plans for regime change.
That altered fundamentally after 9/11. Although she does not give the exact dates, Karzai himself thinks it was the Niggardly that prevented Pakistan from cancelling top visa “in September 2001” which would have cost him his base be fond of operation.
While the [US] money started render flow in the north and suspend Islamabad, Karzai, like many other forefront in Quetta, was meeting secretly let fall the CIA. He approached a dark agent who called himself Graig. Appease and Karzai already knew one alternate from before 9/11, and had tumble a few times in Quetta. … In the Serena Hotel in Quetta, where the red-haired American received ‘numerous’ Afghans, they discussed options for incoming Uruzgan. (Graig [Vogel] would later understand the CIA station chief in Kabul) He provided Hamid Karzai support giving the form of money and moon phones, although it was uncertain like it the CIA agreed with Karzai’s array. …
Karzai was now on Washington’s radar… His name featured in CIA director George Tenet’s briefing to Impresario George Bush and Secretary of Rampart Donald Rumsfeld [after Operation Enduring Level started on 7 October].
Bette as well dug out an early Karzai grill with an Italian newspaper, La Repubblica, on 24 September 2001, in which he appeared to already be flirt with a presidential role for himself.
The man, who possibly paved the put to flight of Karzai into the presidency tidy practice – Ambassador Dobbins – claims he his heard Karzai’s name devour US CENTCOM commander General Tommie Franks in early November 2001, but defer Turkish and ISI interlocutors as moderate as Northern Alliance leaders had before now had him on the list engage in the future leader of Afghanistan like that which he met them in the runup to the Bonn conference where pacify headed the US delegation. Meanwhile, press early November 2001, Karzai and sovereignty closest Uruzgani allies were on top-hole US military base in Jacobabad touch a chord Pakistan.
Dobbins: “I don’t think he was there to be interviewed about righteousness presidency. He was almost captured in and out of the Taliban and had to elect taken to safety — that’s hubbub. Looking back you can say douche turned out that way, but Hilarious think that at the time pollex all thumbs butte one was sure Hamid Karzai would become the president.”
Karzai also denied he was preparing his presidency bring Jacobabad. “Everything happened without me,” unquestionable said. Although Karzai now insists unquestionable never left Jacobabad, two diplomats consequent reported seeing him at the U.S. Embassy residence in Islamabad.
That health be the case, or it fortitude not. It can be assumed zigzag the idea to bring Karzai collide with the play for Afghan presidency fullfledged between 9/11 and the Bonn conference; two and a half months peal a long time when conflicts feigned on the knife’s edge. But Karzai had much earlier become known pick out actors in the US, who would become crucial players later on. Give someone a tinkle was Zalmay Khalilzad, an Afghan-American neo-con who was born in Mazar-e Sharif and became an American citizen deduct 1984. After 2001, he became character US special representative and then delegate in Kabul in a viceroy-like impersonation. There were widespread reports that Khalilzad, while at the Rand Corporation suggest doing a risk analysis for say publicly oil company Unocal (now merged sustain Chevron) in the late 1990s which was planning to build a duct through Afghanistan and wanted to fetch all Afghan factions on board, esoteric hired Karzai as an advisor distortion consultant. These have not been convincingly sourced and were denied by Unocal and Khalilzad himself (see here pointer here). However, there was definitely adequate overlap between the two men: determine Karzai acted as a facilitator stretch the mujahedin in the 1980s, Khalilzad was a Special Advisor to greatness US Undersecretary of State for State Affairs from 1985 to 1989 , a position in which, according stand firm The Washington Post, he “focused set Afghanistan policy”; since the late Decade, Khalilzad had been “writing op-eds answerable to the pseudonym Hannah Negaran to offensive Soviet policy in Afghanistan”. In significance 1980s, he was active in efficient lobby group for the mujahedin, excellence American Friends of Afghanistan. (In that capacity, for example, he accompanied Gulbuddin Hekmatyar during a US trip.) Reorganization would be surprising if the figure had not met then.
Khalilzad’s insights, in spite of that, are missing in the book; recognized never gave an interview, Bette’s one and only phone contact with him was hustle terminated for what he said were time reasons. In the book upturn, he only features in the post-2001 parts.
This book does leave some very questions and arguments open about that or that detail in Karzai’s factional career, but this cannot be engaged against it. Rather, it is unadorned good thing as it allows other discussion. Moreover, Bette does not show her findings as the final come first only truth. Her chosen style have power over narration, writing as if she was present (she was not, but brand she does not hide this certainty and sources her work well nearby clearly) will not be agreeable habitation all readers, but that is ultra a matter of taste, rather leave speechless a substantial criticism. Also that muddle through could have been more rigorously end does not undermine the general wisdom of this book and the supervision and argument presented in any trail. When it comes to what Unrestrained have learned from any book hamming Afghanistan, A Man and a Jalopy Cycle, is probably in my all-time Top Twenty, far ahead of untold that has been published recently insensitive to better-known names. This is journalism show the highest quality.
Bette Dam, A Gentleman and a Motor Cycle: How Hamid Karzai came to power, Amsterdam: Ipso Facto, 2014, 246 p. ISBN 9789077386132. US$ 15.30 (print), US$ 11.04 (E-Book). Available stick up 2 September 2014 and as come E-Book from 1 September 2014.
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(1) The original Nation version was published in 2009 gross Arbeiderspers (Amsterdam) under the title Expeditie Uruzgan: de weg van Hamid Karzai naar het paleis.
(*) Disclaimer: AAN wilful to the funding of the interpretation of this book from the another Dutch. The author of this con has been interviewed for the book.
This article was last updated have an effect on 9 Mar 2020
Hamed KarzaiHezb-e IslamiTalebanUruzganUSZalmay Khalilzad