Kai Eide, a Norwegian diplomat who was Special Representative of the United Nations Secretary-General in Afghanistan from 2008 to 2010, and U.S. Marine Corps General John Allen, who headed the NATO-led forces from 2011 to 2013, told a July 18 audience at the U.S. Institute of Peace that Western officials too often misunderstood Karzai and Afghanistan. Americans and other westerners tended to lock onto Karzai’s acrimonious public criticism rather than the sometimes legitimate and serious issues underlying the anger. The result was superficial solutions and sometimes tragic missed opportunities.

“It’s been difficult to have an Afghanistan policy, and we’ve [more often] had a policy towards President Karzai,” said Scott Smith, USIP’s director for Afghanistan and Central Asia programs. Smith cites the “almost Shakespearean complexity” of Karzai’s leadership and his personality.

“That means the tools and the terms with which we’ve discussed this policy have been more psychological, almost, than diplomatic – what is President Karzai thinking, how can we convince him to do this or to do that?”

The poisonous relationship might even have influenced President Barack Obama’s decision to declare a definite date of December 2016 for the complete withdrawal of all U.S. troops rather than leaving behind a corps that could continue to train and advise the Afghan security forces and ensure a counter-terrorism presence in the region.

Allen said the next president of Afghanistan should request Obama reverse that decision. The United Nations is overseeing a full recount of a runoff election between presidential candidates Abdullah Abdullah, a former foreign minister, and Ashraf Ghani, a former World Bank official. Karzai has made plans to step down upon the inauguration of his successor, ending 13 years in office.

The new president should “consider very seriously whether he needs to speak directly to the president of the United States about changing that policy, given the operational realities in Afghanistan,” Allen said, adding that he would “applaud” such an overture.

Extraordinary complexities

An examination of Karzai’s legacy is critical, Allen said, because it’s important that democratic governments and organizations trying to assist those in transition learn how to deal more constructively with leaders such as Karzai and examine their own responses candidly. Eide agreed, noting the heady optimism of the early days after Karzai was selected at a November 2001 conference in Bonn, Germany, to lead an interim government in the aftermath of the U.S. invasion launched to topple the Taliban regime that had sheltered al-Qaida.

“I believe that the historical legacy of President Karzai is going to be far kinder to him than many of the contemporary opinions are that are expressed routinely about him today,” Allen said.

The environment in which Karzai was operating was extraordinarily complex. Allen notes that he was the fourth commander of the 50-nation international force that Karzai had to work with in what was the “largest war-time coalition in the modern era,” Allen said.

The issues were of enormous import and difficulty far beyond threats from the Taliban. They included historical tensions with neighboring Pakistan, the negotiation of a Strategic Partnership Agreement and then a Bilateral Security Agreement with the U.S., the persistent tragedy of civilian deaths, a rash of insider attacks by Afghan forces against their international counterparts and the scourge of corruption that stained so many transactions in Afghanistan. He inherited a national government structure from the Taliban and had to build local and regional systems that could extend the writ of Kabul throughout the country.

Karzai had a goal of “making Afghanistan a sovereign entity to be reckoned with,” Allen said.

“Hamid Karzai is a man with extraordinary abilities, but with human frailties,” Allen said. “He was placed in one of the most demanding, thankless positions on the planet.”

Karzai certainly created some of his problems himself with his vitriolic criticism not only of the U.S. and Pakistan, but also of the international forces who gave lives and limbs to fight the war against the Taliban, Allen said. The president also should have taken more responsibility for certain actions, such as corruption in the Finance Ministry, Allen said. But Karzai had little capability to draw on within the government ranks because such skills take time to develop.

'Afghan to the core'

Eide said Karzai’s style was “Afghan to the core.” Even though he appeared, based on his western education and fluent English to be fully westernized, Karzai operates in the old Afghan construct in which he grew up before leaving Afghanistan. As a result, he often insisted, for example, that democracy in Afghanistan, at least for now cannot function based purely on rule by the majority, but must be based on consensus, Eide said. And he spent time with tribal leaders, understanding that they needed to be able to return to their villages and say that the president had shown them respect.

“There is no other Afghan leader that I have met who understands his society and its complexity more than he does,” Eide said.

Considering the tremendous progress in Afghanistan on many fronts such as infant mortality, independent media and the status of women, “you cannot say that the man who has presided over this is not an important part of that process,” Eide said.

It also has become clear that, despite the deep suspicions by the West that Karzai would manipulate his way to staying in office, he actually has intended to step down all along, Eide said.

Mujib Mashal, an Afghan writer based in Kabul, told the USIP audience that, while Afghanistan is “a more cohesive and inclusive country than the fractured mess” Karzai inherited, the president’s centralized and personalized style of leadership means the gains are still fragile, warlords still control huge swaths of territory and institutions and the military chain of command remain weak.

Mashal, who last saw Karzai in April, during an interview for an article in The Atlantic magazine, remembers when the president first came to power in 2002. Institutions were so gutted that the presidential palace grounds were a shortcut for pedestrians and a passage for sheep herders.

Karzai inherited a Cabinet with little control over its composition, so he developed informal networks to extend his rule and skirted the ministers, arguing that he wanted to go directly to the people to listen to their needs. He also rejected to a certain extent the premise of the war against the Taliban and never supported the Afghan security forces enough to become a serious commander-in-chief, Mashal said. The president has been criticized for not defining a clear vision for the country.

“At the end of the day, the legacy that matters is the legacy on the ground,” Mashal said.

Allen looked forward to when the next president of Afghanistan will be inaugurated in a few weeks.

“That new president will lead a nation still seriously challenged with a violent insurgency,” Allen said. But it will be a country “profoundly changed for the better in the 12-plus, nearly 13, years since Hamid Karzai assumed his office.”