Of Kabul, Karzai and Kooks

Got in late last night from Kabul, where, at the request of Sir Harry, I met with Hamid Karzai. While this was going on, apparently all of North America, and a goodly portion of the rest of the world, was watching a balloon containing a small child fly through the sky. The whole thing was a hoax, of course, something that should have been immediately apparent given the whacko family behind it. But no, the hoax worked all too well. Lots of other examples, mind you, both at the macro level (religion) or the micro (tree policy in Toronto). The perpetrators? Kooks, all of them.

But back to Afghanistan, and Hamid Karzai. I had never been in Kabul before (Kandahar is a different story) and recalled Lord Strunsky's father and his description of Kabul as "the Paris of Central Asia." This was said sometime around 1945, and indeed, the city prospered until the early Seventies. My husband, the late Lord Strunsky, remembered in the Sixties the well kept gardens, working fountains, and young Afghan women attending Kabul University, many sporting flowing locks and mini-skirts.

This lasted until 1978, when a very effective Prime Minister, Sardar Mohammed Daoud Khan, was killed in a Communist coup, whereupon things went steadily downhill and reached rock bottom with the arrival of the Taliban.

Karzai knew all this -- the man is not stupid -- and wanted to know how to bring all this earlier success back, minus of course the girls apparel -- that would be a hem line too far.

Apparently he had read my earlier synopsis of the situation (courtesy of Sir Harry?) and its thesis of ring-fencing the country for a time, and settling things on the Afghan border with the tribal areas of Pakistan via special forces, satellite-guided missiles, and a big push from the Pakistan army. I told him to take heart, indicating that Pakistan had woken up to the fact that the Taliban were lusting after those nuclear armaments and once had gotten a mite too close to Islamabad for comfort. So they were on the attack even as we met. Gently, however, I suggested that he himself had some decisions to make.

"Hamid, you are in a bit of a bind. The recent election was a tad more than flawed, you are far to close to certain narcotic-driven warlords, and little of government largess actually reaches the people. Hence, I offer the following strategy. Become a second Daoud Khan."

"What do you mean?" he asked hesitantly. (Everything the man does or says is done or said hesitantly).

"Become President, and make Dr. Abdullah your Prime Minister. Let him sort out the tribal alliances, something he knows a lot about. You trot about distributing goodies, attending international meetings, and cut ribbons here and there. In effect, a father of the country, standing above the nasty, and sometimes downright dirty, fray."

"But the UN wants another election --"

"The minute you and Dr. Abdullah come to an agreement, the UN will heave a gigantic sigh of relief, shower Afghanistan with money, and leave."

"But I would have to decide --"

"Yes, you would have to decide."

And there we left it.

Bah. They don't pay me enough.