Afghan Politics: Stuck With Karzai

The Huffington Post reports that many Afghanis, as well as US foreign policy officials, are resigning themselves to another five years of incompetent rule by current President Hamid Karzai.

Afghanistan goes to the polls next month, but even though the elections will be fair and open, many are already predicting that Karzai will be reelected. If that happens it won't be because of his good governance policies - it's been the ineptitude and outright corruption of Karzai's government that has led to a resurgence of the Taliban throughout much of the country; but Karzai will likely triumph because of the way he's adroitly reshaped the country's political landscape. Back in May we reported here that Karzai had convinced the man thought to be his chief competition in the election, regional governor Gul Agha Sherzai (who was also one of the first Afghanis to sign onto the War on Terror, post 9/11) to drop out of the race. HuffPo, meanwhile, describes how Karzai has lined up a host of warlords as his backers, and also says that US campaign-meister James Carville will be traveling to Afghanistan to advise Dr. Ashraf Ghani, candidate of choice among Afghanistan's urban elite.

But Wired.com's Danger Room blog reports that the US might have inadvertently had a solution to their Karzai problem thanks to the US military's reliance on no-bid military contracts. The backstory here is that the US gave a no-bid contract to General Dynamics Ordnance and Tactical Systems to provide three helicopters for the Afghani president. The choppers came tricked out with everything a head-of-state could want: leather chairs, flat screen TVs (with DVD players), an onboard toilet and wood paneling; everything except an anti-missile defense system (another triumph of the no-bid system in providing quality equipment).

Now when you consider that it was the success of Afghan rebels using of Stinger anti-aircraft missiles against helicopters that drove the Soviet Union out of Afghanistan back in the 1980s, you'd think that having an automatic AA system would be something more important for the presidential helicopter than a DVD player...In the end though, the US Army opted for safety over luxury and stripped out some of the TV players to add in an anti-missile defense system.

Of course, given the way next month's election seems to be heading, maybe they'll regret that decision.