Afghanistan's Hamid Karzai has finally gotten his revenge on Barack Obama for trying to humiliate him and oust him from power back in 2009. And the perceived U.S. retreat in AfPak has a lot to do with it.
Kharzai and Iranian president Rouhani signed a security and cooperation pact in Tehran on December 8th, which his spokesperson, Aimal Faizi described to Reuters as "a long-term friendship and cooperation pact with Iran."
"The pact will be for long-term political, security, economic and cultural cooperation, regional peace and security."
Both agree on one important thing...they want the U.S. completely out of the picture:
Rouhani said Sunday his country opposes the presence of foreign forces in Afghanistan and the region, saying their presence generates tension, the official IRNA news agency reported.
IRNA quoted Rouhani as telling Karzai: "We believe that all foreign forces should leave the region and that the security of Afghanistan should be handed over to people of the country."
"We are concerned about tensions caused by foreign forces' presence in the region," Rouhani was quoted as saying. He also called for more cooperation between Tehran and Kabul.
For Karzai, aside from the personal satisfaction of shafting our clueless president, the benefits are obvious. A friendly Iran could help Karzai stay in power by offsetting the Taliban until Karzai can come to his own agreement with them to stay in power, while the Iranians would benefit from a friendly client state in central Asia on its eastern borders...and one with a U.S. trained and equipped military.
And America? We will retreat in 2014 from Afghanistan having achieved absolutely nothing except the expenditure of our blood and treasure.
Thinking about the courage and sacrifice of our warriors there, I think this would be a good time to censor myself in regards to our current commander-in-chief.
There is another agenda here. Relations between the Afghans and the Pakistans have always been bad. Many educated Afghans believe that the Pakistanis want to unify the predominantly Pashtun South Afghan regions with the predominantly Pashtun North Pakistan regions. Many educated Afghans look to India as a counter balance in all this. Karzai was educated at Indian schools. The Indian government gave a lot of aid to Afghanistan - aid which comes without the ties of aid from Pakistan, ties to whichever Islamic sect/faction sends the aid. India's embassy and aid centres have regularly been attacked by the Taliban. There are allegations that Pakistan's ISI encouraged the Taliban attacks on Indian aid depots.
ReplyDeleteThere is a friendly relationship between India and Iran. Both have a common enemy - Pakistan. The Iranians, despite sanctions, have had technical & financial aid from India. A new port in Iran was developed with Indian money. Also a proposed new road across Iranian Baluchistan to Afghanistan is an Indian project.
By signing a treaty with Iran Karzai is in effect also signing up to agreements with India. If he signed directly with India the mullahs would denounce him as India is not an Islamic country. Iran is Islamic so it is halal for him to sign treaties with Iran.
Ivan Winters
Bradford UK
Hello Ivan,
ReplyDeleteYou're quite correct that India and Pakistan both have their own agendas when it comes to Afghanistan.
I myself would not go as far as to say that India and Iran have what I would term a friendly relationship.I see it as more along the lines of a relationship of expedience, with India needing oil for its growing economy and Iran having it. India actually went along with the UN sanctions for awhile, until they were given a waiver by President Obama early on.
Although I was surprised to hear about Indian investment in Iran!
Nor would I quite say that Iran and Pakistan are 'enemies' per se. The Iranians received a significant amount of their nuclear technology from Pakistani scientist AQ Khan, who ran what amounted to a nukes supermarket. And they are both Islamic countries,with, as you point out, some minority populations like the Baluchis in common.
Also,when bi-Laden was assassinated, Iran was one of the countries, along with China and Russia whom the Pakistanis allowed carte blanche to check out the SOTA stealth technology from the wreckage of the one helicopter than crashed.
Either way, it's obvious that America is out of the picture, and the NATO forces will be on their way home shortly.
Thanks for an interesting comment!
Regards,
Rob