Monday, March 29, 2010

Obama Makes a Surprise Visit to Afghanistan

Mr. Obama’s visit was shrouded in secrecy and lasted only a few hours, but included a boisterous pep rally with American troops. It was his first trip as president to the scene of an eight-year-old war he has stamped as his own.

While Mr. Obama said “the American people are encouraged by the progress that has been made,” as he stood beside Mr. Karzai at the heavily fortified presidential palace, Mr. Obama also emphasized that work remained to be done on the governance issues that have frustrated American officials over the past year. “We also want to continue to make progress on the civilian process,” Mr. Obama said. He mentioned several areas, including anticorruption efforts and the rule of law.

The trip highlighted how far the administration believes the Afghan government has to go to make good on promises that Mr. Karzai has made on governance and even reintegration with certain reconcilable members of the Taliban insurgency.

The language used by Mr. Obama and Mr. Karzai in their private discussions was not disclosed. But Gen. James L. Jones, the national security adviser, told reporters on Air Force One en route to Afghanistan that the administration wanted Mr. Karzai to “understand that in his second term, there are certain things that have not been paid attention to, almost since Day 1.”

General Jones said that the Afghan president “needs to be seized with how important” the issue of corruption, in particular, is for American officials.

The visit capped a high-profile week for Mr. Obama, in which he achieved a singular victory domestically — signing health care legislation — and reached an arms control agreement with Russia that calls for the two nuclear powers to slash their nuclear arsenals to the lowest levels in half a century.

Mr. Obama’s visit to Afghanistan came against a backdrop of tension between Mr. Karzai and the Americans that have not substantially abated since Mr. Karzai was declared the winner of an election tainted by fraud. In the wake of last August’s election, the United Nations and the United States, as well as other NATO countries, demanded that Mr. Karzai make major overhauls in the electoral system, tacitly indicating that they might withhold money for the next election if they did not see changes.

Mr. Karzai recently overhauled the Afghan election complaint commission, but made it less neutral by claiming the right to appoint all five members. Currently, three of the members are appointed by the United Nations. The move infuriated some Western diplomats here who saw it as almost a taunt.

Further aggravating tensions was a conference in London at the end of January at which corruption was a major topic and Western officials again made clear that they felt Mr. Karzai had fallen short. Recently, he has strengthened the anticorruption commission, and the attorney general appears to be moving forward on a handful of high-profile cases involving former government figures. Corruption remains pervasive, however, and Mr. Karzai has not used his position as a bully pulpit to change the culture.

“He’s slipping away from the West,” said a senior European diplomat in Kabul.

Mr. Karzai warmly received one of America’s most vocal adversaries, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran, on an official visit to Kabul in early March. Mr. Karzai met with him again this past weekend in Tehran, when the two celebrated the Afghan and Iranian New Year together.

Mr. Karzai returned to Kabul only hours before Mr. Obama landed.

Last week, Mr. Karzai made a three-day trip to China, a country that is making economic investments in Afghanistan, notably in its copper reserves, taking advantage of the hard-won and expensive security efforts of the United States and other Western nations.

Air Force One landed at nighttime at Bagram Air Base after a 13-hour nonstop flight, for a visit kept secret for security reasons. Mr. Obama quickly boarded a helicopter for the trip to Kabul.

White House officials did not give advance notice of the trip, and even went as far as to inform reporters that Mr. Obama would be spending the weekend at Camp David with his family. In fact, the president’s trip occurred during the Afghan night, and he was flying back to Washington before most Afghans awakened Monday morning.

Besides General Jones, Mr. Obama was accompanied by Rahm Emanuel, his chief of staff, and a number of other officials from the White House and the Defense Department.

Mr. Obama also met with some of the tens of thousands of American troops who have been sent to Afghanistan since he took office. His visit with the troops was particularly significant because American combat casualties in Afghanistan have risen sharply while he has been commander in chief.

In the first three months of 2010, at least 83 American service personnel have died in Afghanistan, versus 43 in the first three months of 2009, according to icasualties.org, a database of casualties in the Afghanistan and Iraq conflicts.

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