Karzai at a Crossroads

The hopes of an entire nation rest on Hamid Karzai's shoulders. But does the Afghan president have the best interests of his country in mind?

As he begins his second term as president of Afghanistan, Hamid Karzai carries the hopes of an entire nation on his shoulders. Reelected amid thunderous calls for his defeat and despite charges of corruption, Karzai has weathered the storm and managed, for now, to rally the Afghan people onto his side.

But it remains unclear whether Karzai does indeed intend to act in the best interests of Afghanistan. For if his first-term record as president is any indication of how he will conduct his second term, Karzai stands only to disappoint the many Afghans who have yet again misplaced their faith in him.

Having endured decades of turmoil, instability, and cruelty, the Afghan people need and deserve better leadership. Time and again since 2001 – when the international community deposed the Taliban and endorsed Karzai’s bid to lead a reconstructed Afghanistan – the citizens of Afghanistan have been promised better lives for themselves and better governance for their state.

Yet instead of good government, Afghanistan has been beset by well chronicled episodes of graft and bribery at the highest levels of government, not to mention the continued failure of the Karzai Administration to pinch down on the expanding drug trade.

And instead of an improving quality of life, Afghans have seen declining social services, disrupted public utilities, and unreliable government programs. All of these conspire in a perfect storm to stunt any momentum that the budding spirit of democracy can ever hope to gain in a part of the world deeply in need of democratic institutions.

But there is hope for Afghanistan.

Just recently, in his inspirational inauguration speech at the Presidential Palace in Kabul, Karzai declared his commitment to make good on his campaign pledge to bring peace, prosperity, justice, and reconciliation to a people who have endured the very contrary for decades.

Karzai also took very seriously the solemn oath commanded by the Afghan Constitution, placing his hand on the Koran and swearing with great passion and fervor to “exert my efforts toward the prosperity and progress of the people of Afghanistan.” This promise, uttered in public directly to the citizens of Afghanistan, may augur a new course for his administration and, with it, for the future of Afghanistan.

Of course, in politics, words mean very little without deeds. It would therefore serve Karzai well to follow his inaugural speech with bold action that will demonstrate just how faithfully he has recommitted himself to the values that Afghans long to see in their leaders.

In this respect, Karzai should perhaps take a page from the life of the late Mohammed Zahir Shah, a celebrated Afghan leader upon whom the nation conferred the title of “Father of the Nation” in 2002. During his reign from 1933 to 1973, Zahir Shah modernized Afghanistan’s crumbling infrastructure, revitalized its political processes, and made a strong push for gender equality.

Karzai would do well to take decisive action on each of these three fronts. First, Karzai should invest much of the vast sums of foreign aid that Afghanistan receives from its foreign sponsors into building roads, houses, schools, parks, and other visible edifices that signal to citizens that change is afoot. Second, in the interest of reconciliation and cooperative government, Karzai should offer seats in his ministry to his political adversaries, namely to his opponents in the recent presidential election, for instance Abdullah Abdullah, Ramazan Bashardost, and Ashraf Ghani. Finally, third, Karzai should repudiate the repulsive Afghan laws that currently permit gender discrimination against Shia women. Enacted in the heat of the recent presidential election, these laws are not only unjust and reprehensible but they moreover stand in the way of real progress in Afghanistan.

Hamid Karzai finds himself at a very real crossroads. The choices he makes in the months ahead will shape the fate of the Afghan people for years to come. The challenge for him could not be clearer, nor could the stakes be any higher. Karzai must choose whether to continue to act in his personal interest, as he did during his first term, or to take the road less travelled and instead govern in the larger public interest. Only Karzai can make this decision. For the sake of Afghanistan and the Afghan people, let us hope he chooses the right path.