Karzai survives to lead Afghans

His tribal credentials are regal. His ethnicity is conveniently Pashtun. And he has seen enough of the world to offer a breadth of experience all too rare in the barren hills of his homeland.

But perhaps the most important asset that Hamed Karzai brings to his new role as the head of Afghanistan’s interim government is his proven skill as a survivor - first as an opposition leader in exile and most recently as a guerrilla commander managing to stay one step ahead of the pursuing Taliban.

“That was a critical move for him,” said Larry Good- son, associate professor of international studies at Bentley College in Waltham, Mass., who has known Karzai for 15 years. “He had to send the message that he was a true warrior, and I think it was critical for him to have gone in and cemented the leadership of the tribes.”

As if to drive home the point, Karzai, 46, survived the errant bomb blast yesterday that killed three U.S. soldiers in southern Afghanistan. Encamped with about 2,000 anti-Taliban fighters north of Kandahar, Karzai reportedly was struck in the face by flying debris, though his injuries were superficial.

The narrow miss came shortly after younger brother Shah Wali Karzai urged him during a conversation via satellite telephone to leave the battle zone, now that he has a prominent role in building Afghanistan’s future.

“That’s what I told him yesterday,” Shah Wali Karzai said from Quetta, Pakistan, near the Afghan border. “But he said he is going to finish this job first. ... He is in good condition and is still negotiating with the Taliban. He was very optimistic.”

He may need every bit of that optimism in the months to come. Beginning Dec. 22, Karzai will be chairman of a transitional multiethnic government chosen by an Afghan delegation this week in Bonn, Germany. The 30-member committee will rule Afghanistan for six months, and successors will be chosen by a deliberative council known as a loya jirga.

But as Karzai has found in the past, where Afghanistan is concerned, political and diplomatic leadership can be just as harrowing as a tour on the battlefield.

Karzai has been preparing for this role for years, mostly by working closely with his father, Abdul Ahad Karzai, who served in the Afghan Senate during the early-1970s reign of the now-exiled king, Mohammad Zahir Shah. Jailed for two years after the Soviet invasion, the elder Karzai eventually left Afghanistan and became a fixture in exile politics in Pakistan.

Hamed Karzai, like his sister and several of his seven brothers, traveled abroad to complete his education, earning master’s degrees in international law and international relations in India.

Karzai then joined the work of his father. They watched happily as Afghanistan’s guerrilla factions drove out the Soviet invaders in 1989, then watched in dismay as the factions fell to fighting among themselves.

The Taliban emerged to restore order to much of the country in 1996, but then imposed its severe vision of a medieval Islamic paradise on Afghanistan. That prompted the Karzai father and son to organize several loya jirgas in exile, first in Bonn and then in Istanbul, Turkey.

The meetings attracted the favorable attention of the international community while drawing the ire of the Taliban, and on July 14, 1999, Hamed’s father was assassinated in Quetta while walking home from evening prayers at the mosque.

Hamed took over the role of tribal leader, picking up where his father left off.

“I’ve always thought of him as one of the more politically astute people I’d met,” Goodson said. “As opposed to some of the other Pashtun leaders, he’d never really punched his ‘I’ve killed a bunch of guys’ ticket. He was more of a diplomat. And while that was a weakness in some ways, at the same time it meant he hadn’t made a lot of enemies. So now he’s really nicely positioned. ... He comes from the best possible lineage, and he is also a moderate guy who understands the West.”

And, thanks to his daring mission of the past several months, he has earned his battle stripes.

Karzai crossed the border into southern Afghanistan on Oct. 8, the day after the United States launched airstrikes against the Taliban. Meeting secretly with village leaders and tribal elders, he attempted to rally political opposition in provincial areas just north of Kandahar. But his mission soon became one of survival when he and 100 supporters were attacked by several hundred Taliban fighters. Karzai’s group survived a 10-hour running battle and a wearying 18-hour retreat before he resumed his village-by-village pilgrimage.

By succeeding where other insurgents failed - such as Abdul Haq, who was executed after his capture during a similar mission a few hundred miles to the north - Karzai was perfectly positioned to open the second front against the Taliban once the Northern Alliance swept the Taliban out of the capital city of Kabul.

In Afghanistan’s unruly blend of tribes and ethnic groups, the Karzais number among the royalty of the Populzai, a tribe of some 200,000 Durrani Pashtuns. The Pashtuns are the country’s largest ethnic group, accounting for about 40 percent of the population, and the Durrani tribes in the provinces around Kandahar are rivaled in size only by the Ghilzais, based farther to the east, near Jalalabad and Kabul.

The Ghilzais may be the toughest for Karzai to win over, Goodson said, especially since Ghilzai leader Haji Abdul Qadeer, based in Jalalabad, “has already more or less denounced [the Bonn conference]. The Ghilzais are going to say, ‘Who is Hamed Karzai? We’re getting screwed again by the Durrani Pashtuns.’”

But for the moment, the Karzai family has much to celebrate.

“This is what Hamed wanted,” brother Shah Wali Karzai said. “He was one of the first ones to talk about loya jirga and the broad-based government.”

“We are very happy,” said Aziz Karzai, 60, Hamed’s uncle, who served long ago in Afghanistan’s Foreign Ministry. “It is not so much because Hamed has been chosen, but because after at least 23 years, we finally have some time to breathe.

“We will have our independence again in Afghanistan, and we will again be a part of the international community.”