TIME: Why Afghanistan's
Leader Wants American Bodyguards
Sunday, July 21, 2002
By MICHAEL WARE
To keep your friends close but your enemies closer is
a difficult thing to do in Afghanistan, where it can
often be hard telling one from the other. For
President Hamid Karzai there can be no room for
error, and so this weekend he dismissed his Afghan
bodyguards and replaced them with 46 American
soldiers. It's an ominous sign. "There are currently
very credible threats against the President," says a
Western diplomatic source.
The shift risks being seen as a slap in the face to
extremely powerful interests in Kabul. In the first
days after the Taliban's fall Karzai kept a small
band of Pashtun soldiers from his Kandahari home
close to him. But tensions with the Tajik-dominated
Northern Alliance forces, who fought the Taliban for
close to six years and have now assumed control of
much of the government, meant the future president
had to send his soldiers away. Since then his
personal security has been in the hands of the most
formidable Northern Alliance commander in
Afghanistan, defense minister Mohammed Fahim.
Executive rule and the presidency rests with Karzai,
but in a country where military might marks
authority, a great deal of power resides with the
general. And now some of his friends insist he's lost
face. "It's an insult to the defense minister," says
a commander loyal to Fahim.
But Karzai's switch of faith from Fahim to the
Americans is not so much an indictment of the
general's ability as it is an indication of a
declining level of trust. "We know there could be a
great political cost from doing this," says the
Western diplomat, "but that price, no matter how
much, will be less than losing the president." Two
weeks ago Kabul lost a key figure to assassins'
bullets, deputy president and public works minister
Haji Abdul Qadir. The loss was of more than another
politician; Qadir was Karzai's rallying point for the
vast Pashtun south which feels excluded — and
threatened — by the Northern Alliance. Though the
Qadir killing is most likely related to the drug
trade, local power plays or revenge against a
mujahedin warrior who made many enemies, it has
scared Afghanistan's political elite.
Karzai is not alone in taking extra precautions.
Presidential spokesman Fazel Akbar told TIME a core
of senior ministers has also adopted U.S. bodyguards.
But, he says, it's all temporary and should not be
seen by defense minister Fahim's supporters as a
slight. "The Americans are helping to build the
national army and now they are helping with security
in the presidential palace; it's all the same thing,"
he says. Others don't see it that way.
"It doesn't create a good feeling for Afghans to see
their president have foreign security guards, to see
a president who doesn't have homegrown security,"
former Kabul mayor Fazel Karim Aymaq told TIME. "As
the people see this it may create a longer term
problem." A respected Northern Alliance commander
loyal to Fahim, Aymaq was recently replaced as mayor,
a move that has further antagonized Karzai's
political rivals. Western sources cite incompetence
and a lack of management as the reason and Aymaq
concedes the president had questioned his
performance.
Akbar insists that Afghans shouldn't read too much
into this. "This will be only for a short time," he
says. "It doesn't mean we want to give all security
to the Americans."