[Peace-discuss] The Geppetto strategy

[C. G. Estabrook]

[The Obama administration tries to turn a puppet into a real boy...  --CGE]

	Americans pull strings in Afghan election
	By ERIC MARGOLIS
	Last Updated: 26th October 2009, 9:19am

Henry Kissinger once observed that being America's ally can be more dangerous 
than being its enemy.

Take poor Hamid Karzai, the amiable former business consultant and CIA "asset" 
installed by Washington as Afghanistan's president. As the U.S. increasingly 
gets its backside kicked in Afghanistan, it has blamed the powerless Karzai for 
its woes and bumbling.

You can almost hear Washington rebuking, "Bad puppet! Bad puppet!"

The U.S. Congressional Research service just revealed it costs a staggering $1.3 
million per annum to keep an American soldier in Afghanistan. Costs for Canadian 
troops are likely similar. This huge expense can't go on forever.

The U.S. government has wanted to dump Karzai, but could not find an equally 
obedient but more effective replacement. There was talk of imposing an American 
"chief executive officer" on him. Or, in the lexicon of the old British Raj, an 
Imperial Viceroy.

Washington finally decided to try to shore up Karzai's regime and give it some 
legitimacy by staging national elections in August. The UN, which has 
increasingly become an arm of U.S. foreign policy, was brought in to make the 
vote kosher. Canada eagerly joined this charade.

No political parties were allowed to run. Only individuals supporting the West's 
occupation of Afghanistan were allowed on the ballot.

Occupation army

The vote was conducted under the guns of a foreign occupation army -- a clear 
violation of international law. The U.S. funded the election commission and 
guarded polling places from a discreet distance. The Soviets were much more 
subtle when they rigged Afghan elections.

As I wrote before the election, it was all a great big fraud within a larger 
fraud designed to fool American, Canadian and European voters into believing 
democracy had flowered in Afghanistan. Cynical Afghans knew the vote would be 
rigged. Most Pashtun, the nation's ethnic majority, didn't vote. The "election" 
was an embarrassing fiasco.

To no surprise, Washington's man in Kabul, Hamid Karzai, won. But his supporters 
went overboard in stuffing ballot boxes to avoid a possible runoff with rival 
Dr. Abdullah Abdullah, another American ally. The Karzai and Abdullah camps were 
bitterly feuding over division of U.S. aid and drug money that has totally 
corrupted Afghanistan.

The vote was discredited, thwarting the Obama administration's plans to use the 
election as justification for sending more troops to Afghanistan. The White 
House's Plan B: Forcing its two feuding "assets," Karzai and Abdullah, into a 
coalition. But two puppets on a string are no better than one.

Washington just arm-twisted Karzai into agreeing to a run-off vote that will 
likely be as bogus as the last one. In Afghanistan, ethnicity and tribe trump 
everything else. Karzai is a Pashtun, but has almost no roots in tribal politics.

The suave Abdullah, who is also in Washington's pocket, is half Pashtun, half 
Tajik. But he is seen as a Tajik who speaks for this ethnic minority which 
detests and scorns the majority Pashtun. Tajiks will vote for Abdullah, Pashtun 
will not. If the U.S. manages to force Abdullah into a coalition with Karzai, 
Pashtun -- 55% of the population -- won't back the new regime which many Afghans 
will see as western yes-men and Tajik-dominated.

Abdullah also has some very unsavoury friends from the north: Former Afghan 
Communist Party bigwigs Mohammed Fahim and Uzbek warlord Rashid Dostam -- both 
major war criminals. Behind them stand the Tajik Northern Alliance and 
resurrected Afghan Communist Party, both funded by Russia and backed by Iran and 
India.

Ironically, the U.S. is now closely allied with the Afghan Communists and 
fighting its former Pashtun allies from the 1980s anti-Soviet struggle. Most 
North Americans have no idea they are now backing Afghan Communists and the men 
who control most of Afghanistan's booming drug trade.

If Hamid Karzai really wants to establish himself as an authentic national 
leader, he should demand the U.S. and NATO withdraw their occupation forces and 
let Afghans settle their own disputes in traditional ways.

eric.margolis at sunmedia.ca