You can lead a horse to water…

…but you can’t make him drink. This is pretty much about where we are with the Government in Afghansitan these days. Paddy Ashdown was supposed to be the new ’super-envoy’ of the UN to get the international community’s civilian efforts all on the same page. He was going to be a real asset to Kabul, NATO and the UN. But the Afghans sunk the ship before it even left port. 

Easy come, easy go as one friend of mine close to Paddy Ashdown told me yesterday. My response – what a way for the Afghans to shoot themselves in the foot.  Paddy Ashdown was the best person to corral western efforts in Afghanistan. He was not – and he knew he could not – going to force the Afghans to do anything they did not want. He might have applied pressure regarding corruption in the Government in Kabul, but that would have been a good thing. A lot of Afghans are disenfranchised that many of the people who destroyed Afghanistan in the civil war of the 1990s are now in the government. And the police are rubbish, since the Ministry of the Interior is more akin to a Ministry of Corruption than anything else.  But the key thing here is that Ashdown had the personality to move the West to act. He is respected. It would be tough for the international community to respond when he spoke. Furthermore, the Americans had faith in him, which is crucial to the success of anyone in the post.  I doubt the second choice will be a better one. Way to go Kabul. Karzai’s pettiness will cost him. 

 On Karzai shooting his own foot: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/asia/article3254382.ece 

On Ashdown’s appointment: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/article3195780.ece 

Commentary on the appointment: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/asia/article3196614.ece 

~ by drmjwilliams on January 31, 2008.