Poster boy: Karzai’s flawed personality cult is a dangerous embarrassment to behold

Afghanistan’s presidential election campaign was doomed from the outset to endure a preposterous finish. After all, the candidate most likely to win, Hamid Karzai, is as mistrusted by his Western sponsors as he is reviled by the Taliban, despite once having been Washington’s hand-picked Afghan savior.

But nothing could have prepared the Afghan people, or the “internationals” who claim to defend them, for the latest gaff from the Karzai regime. With its outrageous attempt to impose a reporting ban on journalists, both foreign and domestic, covering violence during Thursday’s vote, the corruption-wracked regime proposes much more than martial law of the airwaves.

It would shoot the messenger in advance, while denying the electorate – the people of Afghanistan - the freedom to inform themselves, and to secure their homes and families.

So desperate is Hamid Karzai for a first-round win that he would rather keep his own people in the dark than respect their democratic right to exercise choice on election day – most particularly the choice to avoid polling stations targeted by terrorists.

This affront is as typical as it is revealing. The campaign has seen Karzai display the worst aspects of his character. He has called in favours from every official and appointee in the realm. With ruthless efficiency, his team has exploited state assets and infrastructure to tilt the odds against their challengers.

Confronted by Dr. Abdullah Abdullah’s classy and spirited quest for support from all parts of the country, Karzai has happily embraced gangsters and warlords and heroin Khans.

With ghouls like Rashid Dostum, Rasool Sayyaf and Gul Agha Sherzai under his tent, Karzai confirms himself as another of Washington’s great Afghan turncoats, a personification of blowback.

Indeed, this election says as much about Karzai’s former benefactors as it does about the wayward quisling himself. It is an object lesson in the chronic failure of U.S. policymakers to learn from past mistakes, and to be honest with themselves and the American people they serve.

For instance, the Uzbek warlord and alleged war criminal Dostum, denounced by U.S. Embassy officials on his return to Afghanistan this week. Let’s remember that the accused marched into Karzai’s December, 2001 investiture as a partner, side by side with General Tommy Franks, the supposed Schwarzkopf of the Taliban’s post-9/11 demise.

Equally, how can U.S. and NATO leaders hope to be taken seriously in protesting the “family law” legislation signed by Karzai this week, permitting husbands to starve wives who refuse regular sex?

U.S. and NATO leaders have witnessed Karzai’s descent into extremist bottom-feeding and corruption for years and did nothing to address it, despite the regime being bankrolled by Western tax dollars and sustained by Western blood on the battlefield.

On that front, Karzai’s forlorn foreign sponsors this week have plumbed new depths in hoodwinking their own electorates in the West. They trumpeted confirmation that a C.I.A. drone had finally caught up with the Pakistani Taliban cutthroat Baitullah Mehsud as a great success in the war on terrorism.

Yet they've had nothing to say as to why Mullah Omar and his Afghan Taliban leadership aren’t also in a Hellfire missile’s remote sights, and why Omar's guerrillas continue to enjoy Pakistan’s sanctuary and support - even as Taliban suicide bombers blast NATO’s doorstep in Kabul, slaughtering Afghan civilians within yards of the self-styled counter-insurgency “specialist” General Stanley McChrystal.

Despite all of this, the election compels our attention. The brave people who have organized the ballot and will supervise it, both Afghan and expatriate, deserve our thanks.

The citizens of Afghanistan are worthy of the greatest respect. Today they will risk their lives to exercise a right many Westerners can’t be bothered with.

We miss the real meaning of the Afghan election if we, in the West, don’t acknowledge that Karzai’s failings, like the Taliban’s recent successes, are mainly due to our own leaders’ incompetence and hypocrisy, and the unwillingness of Western voters to hold their elected representatives fully accountable.

Today, almost certainly, courageous Afghans will sacrifice their lives for democracy. Ignoring the real reasons why will only kill off a little more of our own claim to democratic freedom.