The Eikenberry cables

Apparently an unnamed official has decided that Ambassador "Eikenberry's detailed assessments be made public, given that they were among the most important documents produced during the debate that led to the troop buildup." Given that the debate within the administration is over for the time being, the President has decided on a policy, and the policy is being implemented - oh, and that the cables are, ya know, classified - this strikes me as a really bad idea at this juncture.

Really, other than undermining any residual trust among senior officials (especially between civilians and military) and pissing off the Commander in Chief, what exactly is this going to accomplish?

Given the, ahem, vigor of his disagreement with McChystal last November, I was dubious that Eikenberry was a real contender for the soon-to-be-created top NATO civilian in Afghanistan. This would seem to make it all the more unlikely, and maybe that was the real point of the leak.

I've yet to read the cables themselves carefully, but the NYT's summary of the arguments makes them sound pretty weak: dangers of Afghan over-dependency (reminiscent of Iraq under Casey, and someone forgot to tell the Brits in SL); and I believe Lil could write a short dissertation in response to Eikenberry's concerns about the ANSF on why the conventional wisdom about attrition rates in ANA don't capture the whole story...that said I'm going to reserve judgment until I've read the originals in full.

"Karzai should see this as 'Godfather II'..."

"You got to get out of the business and go legit."

That's what one UN official had to say about the Afghan president's familial links to drug trafficking and other forms of criminality, as related by the excellent Elizabeth Rubin in yesterday's New York Times Magazine. More:

Yet on every trip I’ve made to Kandahar, I have heard another story about Ahmed Wali and drugs. Some of the people who have recounted the incidents are now dead. Like Malim Akbar Khakrezwal, an elder of the Alakozai tribe. In 2006, he took me around the fertile lands of his district, which are now infiltrated by Taliban. He told me that when he was provincial-intelligence chief, he captured 1,400 kilograms of opium belonging to Jan Muhammad, then governor of Uruzgan and a very close friend of the president. Jan Muhammad told Akbar to release the opium, and he refused. “My brother called me and said, ‘We are not able to fight these big people,’ ” Akbar told me. “ ‘We are weak. Release them.’ So I went to Ahmed Wali and said: ‘You are my commander; what should I do with this opium? Should I give it back to Jan Muhammad?’ ‘Yes. Give it back,’ he said. Twenty days later I was released from my position.” Last year he was assassinated.

A Western intelligence official who has spent much of the last seven years in Kandahar and, for obvious reasons, wanted to remain anonymous, told me: “The Karzai family has opium and blood on their hands. They systematically install low-level officials up to provincial governors to make sure that, from the farm gate, in bulk, the opium is moved unfettered. When history analyzes this period and looks at this family, it will uncover a litany of extensive corruption that was tolerated because the West tolerated this family.”

Perhaps. Or not. As many Afghans have pointed out, U.S. history is full of robber barons and of families who made their fortunes during Prohibition, and in the words of Ashraf Ghani “turned very decent as families.”

The article's already been linked by a bunch of people, but I'm highlighting it here in case you've missed it. In the midst of all this talk about strategic re-assessment in Afghanistan, and with the 20 August presidential election looming, we might ought to give a little consideration to how our horse (?) is being perceived by his own (myriad) constituency/ies, right?