Massoud Hossaini/AFP-Getty Images
Survivor: Karzai evades death one more time

By Jeffrey Stern

The first mortar round fell during a 21-gun salute, so that the thunder of the real cannonade was camouflaged by that of the staged.  When the parliamentarians struck by gunfire slumped back, those standing near appeared casually confused rather than frightened, as if a fellow dignitary had merely succumbed to a fainting spell, and had unbalanced a few others on his way down.  Then, visible on national television, was the accelerating reaction of people who recognize the presence of danger but not its exact location.  Troops in fatigues ran into those wearing ceremonial dress while men belly-flopped to check the undercarriages of SUVs for charges, pulled flak jackets out and threw them at those who didn’t already have them. Soldiers fled, and the president’s men took up firing positions while the president himself ducked into an SUV and was driven to safety. 

This was the scene in Kabul on Sunday, when Afghanistan President Hamid Karzai narrowly escaped yet another assassination attempt—the fourth since he took office. Three people, including a child and a parliamentarian from Paktia province where, ironically, the Taliban is far more active than here in Kabul, died in the attack.

Less than two hours after the abrupt end to Kabul’s celebration of Mujaheddin day—the 16th anniversary of the country’s liberation from Soviet-backed rule—Karzai appeared on national TV looking neither grave nor concerned.  Indeed, throughout his address he seemed to be suppressing a smirk--the beginning of a grin that was either a deliberate taunt to the conspirators, or just an expression of the tendency to smile when things get serious. The gist of his message: I’m ok, we caught the bad guys, have a good day.” (A spokesman for the Taliban, which claimed responsibility for the attack, said that three of the attackers were killed; three escaped.)

Given that the parade was political theater—the government risks exposing that it’s not in control, in the hopes of demonstrating that it is—Karzai was playing master of ceremonies, apologizing for a brief interruption, and, in a way, assuring the audience that the show would go on.  The parade took place amidst Karzai’s campaign to tell the West he doesn’t need them bossing him around, and, now that he’s hinting at a second term as president, to prove to his people that he believes it.  He’s a man whose mandate is to be the mortar holding together the disparate ethnic and political factions that comprise a national house on the verge of collapse.   “The mayor of Kabul” is the tongue-in-cheek moniker worn out now beyond the point of cliché, but if it accurately appraises his reach, then this marks the first time he was targeted in his own municipality.

Still, Karzai is seasoned by his years dodging bullets, both those composed of political vitriol, and those composed of lead.  And by now, he’s a leader of sturdy constitution, able to respond publicly to attempts on his life with an air of the cavalier.  His outward bearing was less that of a man who’s just escaped assassination, and more of a boy who has once more dodged his pursuer in a game of tag.  A little pride, rather than relief.
 
Within hours of the attack the Taliban claimed responsibility, their spokesman saying celebrating “independence” was a farce.  “We cannot say Afghanistan is free,” Zabiullah Mujaheed told reporters over the phone.  “Afghanistan is still under the domination of infidels.” It would have been a dismissible piece of publicized paranoia had it not so closely echoed Karzai’s own indictment of western meddling, published in the previous day’s New York Times.  “We have to make sure that when a Talib comes to Afghanistan,” Karzai told the Times, “he is safe from arrest by the coalition.” 

It would seem pleading clemency for a party one day that shoots at you the next is a sign of ineptitude and political impotence.  But to Karzai, the mire of Afghanistan has always been a Tale of Two Talibans: The orthodox, and the extreme.  The puritans protecting farmers in the countryside, and the militants shooting at presidents in the city. As far as Karzai is concerned, the bridge between the two types of Talib is not an organic one.  It’s built by foreign entities exploiting religious fervor for political purposes.  America empowering radical elements in the Mujaheddin to drive out the Soviets and ultimately enabling the Taliban movement; Pakistan and their policy of “Strategic Depth.”

And the backdrop of the day’s events would have provided a fitting stage for Karzai to illuminate the ill effects of the international community on his country.  Spectators lined up in front of Ghazi stadium, where the Taliban once served up public executions as standard fare between halves of soccer; in a neighborhood named for the holy warrior Ghazi Mahmoud Khan--“Ghazi” being the title bestowed upon one who kills invaders--in Khan’s case, the British.  And all of it an area reduced to rubble and rebar during the civil war, damage wrought predominantly by the rockets of Ahmed Shah Massoud, the warlord favored and funded by America. 

And so begins the Taliban’s spring offensive, not as a massive bloodletting in the thawing mountains of a remote province, but as a thoughtfully-constructed stage usurped in the heart of the capitol city.  The Taliban exerts instability not only in its capacity for destruction, but also in its ability to access targets that should be unattainable, and then to capitalize.  If the government has its national radio and television network, then the Taliban’s mouthpiece is the mouth of the common Afghan, who wonders aloud how the attackers could get so close without inside help.   And once the prospect of compromised government is voiced by semi-official sources in semi-respectable publications, rumors spread like wildfire: Karzai himself planned the attack so the proceedings would be wrapped up before his political opponents had a chance to speak. On the streets they joked that a local television network was behind it all, staging a diversion so Parliament would forget about its recent ban on Indian soap operas. A picture of the Spring ’08 Taliban begins to crystallize: newly urbanized, as P.R savvy as ever, and cultivating sources inside the security apparatus (or making a convincing case that they are).   Meanwhile, Karzai is up against them; he’s up against an international community skeptical of his ability to stand up to his people, he’s up against a people skeptical of his ability to stand up to the international community, and he may be up for re-election.  Perhaps that near smile was a grimace after all.

Jeffrey Stern is a freelance journalist based in Kabul.