After a great deal of procrastination and backdoor wheeling and dealing with the warlords and major foreign interests in Afghanistan, finally Hamid Karzai, the beleaguered and impotent chairman of the Afghan Islamic Transitional Administration, announced his candidacy along with the names of his running mates for the up-coming presidential elections in October.

By waiting (or being forced to wait) until the last day of the legally mandated nomination period, Karzai, in spite of repeated denials by himself and his staff, exposed his failure in the task of putting together a viable coalition with the warlords and other numerous power brokers who consider themselves claimants of the Afghan political bonanza. It was this failure that forced Mr. Karzai and his American coach Khalilzad to pick Ahmad Zia Masood, the younger brother and protégé of the legendary Jehadi commander Ahmad Shah Masood, and Abdul Karim Khalili as his running mates.

From L to R : Ahmad-Zia Massoud, Hamed Karzai and Karim Khalili.

Based on the logic of ethnicity, and because of the self-serving currency that the race card has gained in the Afghan politics and among Afghan politicians, Khalili's inclusion in the presidential team is not surprising. To keep at least a part of the circa 600,000 Hazara votes on his side, and to maintain some degree of leverage against the cabals of the Panjsheri clique in his cabinet, Karzai desperately needs Khalili's assistance and cooperation. After all, Khalili is a complacent, harmless paper tiger who does not seem to have ambitions beyond the post of vice presidency. He has been an obedient group player, and a mitigating factor against the Panjsheris, who has carefully avoided any challenging remarks or actions against Karzai.

The reasons behind the second choice made by Messrs Khalilzad and Karzai, however, are less clear and thus deserve a closer examination. Zia Masood, the Afghan ambassador in Moscow before his nomination, is a quiescent political/financial functionary of the Jehadi times, whose name appears in Ghost Wars by Steve Coll. According to Mr. Coll, based on a prior agreement with Ahmad Shah Masood, in January 1990, a CIA agent named Gary Schroen delivered to Zia Masood, who represented Ahmad Shah Masood in Peshawar, $500,000 to be forwarded to the latter for the job of closing the Salang Pass to the Soviets. The CIA was interested in the closure of the pass because it was used by the Soviets to re-supply Najib's embattled forces. Mr. Coll writes that in spite of the money being delivered to Zia Masood, the job didn't get done and the pass remained open. Six years later, Mr. Coll writes further, when Mr. Schroen met Masood and his commanders in Panjsher valley, he reminded them of the money that he had sent them in the past. To Mr. Schroen's surprise, writes Coll, "Masood and his aids began to talk among themselves. One of them quietly said in Dari, 'We didn't get $500,000'." Apparently, Zia Masood had intercepted the money on the way to Panjsher by keeping it for himself.

Zia is also the son-in-law of Burhanuddin Rabani, the nominal head of Jamiat-e Islami, whose lack of political authority and acumen during his failed and chaotic presidency (1992-1996) led to the civil war, and paved the way for the rise of the hard-line Taliban. Thus, being the brother of a Jehadi legend, the son-in-law of the titular leader of the Jamiat-e Islami, and a prominent member of the Panjsheri clan that dominates Kabul and its northern environs, Zia has been picked by the Khalilzad/Karzai duet not on the basis of his moral and political credentials, but rather because the duet expects him to serve as Karzai's protective shield against Marshall Fahim, the defense minister, and his thuggish affiliates who have been at loggerheads with Karzai for quite some time.

Whether Zia would (or could) perform the function he is supposed to perform, is not

In a sense, by having Zia inside his cabinet and as his deputy, Karzai has allowed Fahim and the rest of the Panjsheri cabal to control his actions and policies more effectively and closely from inside the palace, rather than relying on speculation about what Karzai may have in store for them. Karzai/Khalilzad may have made this choice knowing the reassuring effect of Zia's deputy status on Fahim and his gang.

 The fact that Qanooni entered the presidential race as a candidate and received endorsement from Fahim, Abdullah, the Foreign minister, and Ahmad-Wali Masood, the older brother of Ahmad-Shah Masood, strengthens the argument that the Panjsheri cabal is up to challenging and controlling Karzai not only from outside but also from within the cabinet.

Notwithstanding, in spite of all of the Western media hype about democracy in Afghanistan, and the cat-and-mouse game played by these and other twenty three alleged candidates on the surface of the Afghan political landscape, there should be no illusion that the last word about elections and who is going to be elected lies with foreign interests, particularly with the U.S. and its ambassador in Kabul, who control, finance and provide security for the show. In this sense, all the twenty three nominal presidential candidates who have mastered the ten thousand required voter registration cards, in one way or other, are playing in the hands of the same player. Put more bluntly, the beginning of the election season in Afghanistan marks the beginning of the puppet show in that country.

It should be added that Karzai/Khalilzad's unsavory choice of running mates for Karzai shows their lack of interest in changing the stifling culture of political corruption and expediency that has taken over the lives of Afghans over that past twenty six years of war, foreign interference, and nonexistent national leadership. Karzai/Khalilzad's choice, furthermore, dashed the hopes of those educated Afghans who craved for the creation of a fresh political space and climate that could facilitate Afghanistan's exit out of its current violent, warlord-dominated socio-political morass. In addition, Karzai/Khalilzad's decision to choose Masood and Khalili as his running mates puts on display their complicity with the warlords, a complicity that is due to the lack of courage on Karzai's part to take risk for the purpose of curbing the power of the warlords and empowering ordinary Afghans to take charge of their own destinies.

Last but not least, Karzai/Khalilzad's choice of vice presidents shows their lack of long-term political perspective and imagination. Zia and Khalili lack the national vision and charisma to help take Afghanistan out of its painful national identity crisis. They both are parochial, narrow-minded, and ethnicity-based personalities who lack any national standing and credibility. They both are members of ethnically-based interest groups who will use their offices to distribute and redistribute government posts and privileges to their narrow-based constituencies. This will further deepen the ethnic divide that has threatened and continues to threaten Afghan unity and Afghanistan's territorial integrity. It will deepen the wounds and enlarge the scars that have been inflicted on the Afghan society during twenty six years of war and conflict.

The question at this point is: Will the people of Afghanistan gather around Karzai and his mediocre choice of vice presidents? I for one will be very surprised if they did. My recommendation to those who think about Afghanistan is: Stay alert and watch the events unfolding, because the Afghan puppet show has just began, the Afghan puppet war will soon follow. © Jan Qarabaghi/Afghan Observer 2004