M K Bhadrakumar: A neo-con Yankee in Karzai's court
[Ambassador M K Bhadrakumar was a career diplomat in the Indian Foreign Service. His assignments included the Soviet Union, South Korea, Sri Lanka, Germany, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Uzbekistan, Kuwait and Turkey.]
The neo-conservatives have all but been vanquished. But the Barack Obama administration in the United States is making a solitary exception in the case of Zalmay Khalilzad. He is back on the Washington circuit, repeating an amazing trapeze act which has few parallels in the chronicles of political opportunism.
His life and times have been exciting, on a constant upward graph ever since he migrated from the dusty ancient Silk Road town of Mazar-i-Sharif on the Amu Darya in northern Afghanistan to the United States in search of the American dream.
"Zal" (as he is popularly known) has crossed the American political divide with abandon. Branded as a neo-con who contributed to the New American Century Project under former US defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld's watch, he was indeed destined to occupy key positions in the US establishment during the George W Bush era, which he did, steadily rising from the position of under secretary in the Pentagon, special envoy to the Iraqi Kurds and Afghans, ambassador to Afghanistan and Iraq, finally, to cabinet rank as Bush's representative to the United Nations.
Now he is reportedly negotiating his way back to his old hunting ground in Kabul. The New York Times newspaper's ace Washington correspondent has broken the story quoting senior American and Afghan officials that Zal could assume a "powerful, unelected position inside the Afghan government". Such a position, a senior US administration official has been quoted as saying, involves Zal serving as "a prime minister, except not prime minister because he wouldn't be responsible to a parliamentary system".
That's one hell of a cute way of putting a complicated matter in real perspective. Cooper reveals that officials in the Obama administration wouldn't admit they are behind the seamless idea, but apparently Obama, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Af-Pak representative Richard Holbrooke are all seized of it and have been plain decent about it, leaving it to President Hamid Karzai "to decide whether to proceed".
Karzai, apparently, is mulling over what is undeniably a most dicey situation - the Obama administration wants to insert Zal into the Kabul power structure but will not be upfront about it. He must be wondering that it's a bit like what the Chicago mafia would have done to him...
Read entire article at Asia Times
The neo-conservatives have all but been vanquished. But the Barack Obama administration in the United States is making a solitary exception in the case of Zalmay Khalilzad. He is back on the Washington circuit, repeating an amazing trapeze act which has few parallels in the chronicles of political opportunism.
His life and times have been exciting, on a constant upward graph ever since he migrated from the dusty ancient Silk Road town of Mazar-i-Sharif on the Amu Darya in northern Afghanistan to the United States in search of the American dream.
"Zal" (as he is popularly known) has crossed the American political divide with abandon. Branded as a neo-con who contributed to the New American Century Project under former US defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld's watch, he was indeed destined to occupy key positions in the US establishment during the George W Bush era, which he did, steadily rising from the position of under secretary in the Pentagon, special envoy to the Iraqi Kurds and Afghans, ambassador to Afghanistan and Iraq, finally, to cabinet rank as Bush's representative to the United Nations.
Now he is reportedly negotiating his way back to his old hunting ground in Kabul. The New York Times newspaper's ace Washington correspondent has broken the story quoting senior American and Afghan officials that Zal could assume a "powerful, unelected position inside the Afghan government". Such a position, a senior US administration official has been quoted as saying, involves Zal serving as "a prime minister, except not prime minister because he wouldn't be responsible to a parliamentary system".
That's one hell of a cute way of putting a complicated matter in real perspective. Cooper reveals that officials in the Obama administration wouldn't admit they are behind the seamless idea, but apparently Obama, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Af-Pak representative Richard Holbrooke are all seized of it and have been plain decent about it, leaving it to President Hamid Karzai "to decide whether to proceed".
Karzai, apparently, is mulling over what is undeniably a most dicey situation - the Obama administration wants to insert Zal into the Kabul power structure but will not be upfront about it. He must be wondering that it's a bit like what the Chicago mafia would have done to him...