Karzai's desperate moves

It should come as no surprise that Afghan President Hamid Karzai has been engaged in supposedly "secret" talks with the Taliban, as reported in today's New York Times.

A survivor, Karzai is desperately trying to save himself, his friends, and his family. And, I doubt that US intelligence was not aware of Karzai's actions. What's fascinating, however, is that Karzai's actions are newsworthy.

As the article points out, these behind-the-scenes talks have produced nothing. One of the reasons that they've been fruitless is that Karzai and the US have had no luck in finding anyone of any substance who truly represents the Taliban's seemingly untouchable leader, Mullah Omar.

But that too, should not come as a surprise. As I wrote in Above the Din of War, one of the Taliban's best games has been to pose impostors as their inside men, people who supposedly have direct access to Mullah Omar.

The funniest one was when US and British intelligence services sent a mission into Pakistan to pick up a man who was said to be a Taliban insider. The man was handed a bag of $100s and whisked into a series of high level meetings with US and Afghan officials.

Though this man did little more than grunt and nod, he was touted as a breakthrough. In the end, however, it was revealed that this man was little more than a Pakistani shopkeeper. His story is the Pakistani version of Pee Wee Herman's Big Adventure.

The Taliban is still laughing over that one. But there's more. Take, for instance, the death of the former Afghan President Burhanuddin Rabbani, the man who Karzai appointed to head up his Peace Council.

After a couple of years of trying, the Taliban sent an envoy to meet with Rabbani, who was kind enough to let the man stay at his home while he was away from Kabul. When Rabbani returned and met with the man, the envoy detonated a bomb hidden in his turban, killing himself and Rabbani.

Hmmm. Could there be a message here?

Then there was the time when Karzai killed talks that the US State Department had arranged with the Taliban in Qatar. In one of the few instances where I have agreed with him, Karzai said no because the Taliban had essentially set up what amounted to an embassy-in-exile in Qatar. The Taliban wanted to conduct talks posing as the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan. Karzai refused.

So, why would Karzai continue to reach out to the Taliban after all of this?

As I've written in earlier posts, Karzai has lost touch with reality. He lives exclusively inside the confines of his fortified palace, yet is able to see the writing on the wall. The Taliban's grip is growing stronger each and every day. It is only a matter of time before their strangle hold on Afghanistan is once again complete.

Karzai knows that when the Taliban takes over again, his life and that of his extended family and associates is over. What can be confiscated of his will be taken by the Taliban. If he escapes alive, he'll be lucky. In an effort to forestall this inevitability, Karzai has reached out to the Taliban.

As the Times points out, this may help explain why Karzai has refused to sign the agreement that would put the US forces inside Afghanistan for another decade. It would also explain why he has so steadfastly insisted on releasing dozens of Taliban prisoners the US has kept locked up in Baghram.

By delaying the signing and ranting against the US, Karzai has foolishly tried to curry favor with the Taliban. Sorry. It won't work.

Good-bye, Joachim

The United Nations Secretary-General's office this week announced that it's closing the Kampala office of Joachim Chissano, the special envoy to what is called the "LRA-affected areas."

The closing of the office comes as something of a surprise, since just last December, Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon extended Chissano's mandate for a year. Now, the office is closing six months early.

He was initially appointed in 2006, not long after peace talks with the Lord's Resistance Army began. In truth, Chissano has been aloof, inaccessible and ineffective, having mostly tagged along as Ugandans and chief mediator Riek Machar did the work.

On one occasion, in an attempt to revive the sagging peace talks, Chissano made a publicized attempt to meet with Kony personally. Only Kony didn't show up, despite apparently have agreed to do so.

Clearly this signals that not only the UN, but most everyone else has given up on trying to reach a peace deal with the Joseph Kony and his Lord's Resistance Army.

The spokesperson for Ban Ki-moon, Michele Montas, took a question on the issue Thursday in her daily press briefing:

Question: "Yesterday it became clear that the Secretary-General was closing down the office in Kampala with Chissano, who is done six months earlier. Does that mean that the UN has resigned itself to believing that the arrest of [LRA leader Joseph] Kony is the only way to move forward?"

Montas: "Well, I think it’s a fact that, you know, what is happening on the ground… Mr. Kony has never shown up to sign the agreement, I think is definitely a factor. Mr. Chissano really cannot do much more than he has already done. We’re not resigning ourselves to the fact, but we’re just saying that there is no point in trying to keep the office open if nothing is happening."

Question: "Can’t the UN arrest him, or what…?"

Montas: "The UN does not have the power to arrest anyone."

So what's next? Chissano is probably headed back to Mozambique, which is where he is from and where he served as president.

And, Kony is still out there, roaming around the remote recesses of the northeastern Democratic Republic of the Congo. While the severity and frequency of his attacks have diminished, they're still taking place.

Just this past week, there were fresh attacks by LRA fighters on communities in South Sudan, not far from Yambio, the regional capital of the Western Equatoria state. The people providing any resistance are the so-called Arrow Boys, who are a home-grown militia that is armed with only bows and arrows.

South Sudan President Salva Kiir has promised to send some of his Sudanese People's Liberation Army there, but it's too little, too late, since South Sudan failed in its mission to "seal" its border with the DRC and prevent the LRA from entering the country.

This closure comes in the wake of calls from such groups as Enough for regional forces, supported again by the U.S., to "finish the job" on Kony. And, a bill has been introduced into Congress that essentially calls for the same thing.

Unfortunately, a second effort against Kony would most likely be headed by the Ugandan army once again. And what would that result be?

Winds of change

Change promised by President Barack Obama is coming swiftly to Africa.

The change is in focus and approach: focus on finding a solution to festering problems and approaching the issues through collective action -- if possible.

Key areas are Sudan and Darfur.

This past week the State Department announced that U.S. special envoy to Sudan, Scott Gration, will travel to China, Qatar, Britain and France to revive the sagging Darfur peace talks.

China clearly is a key to ending the nearly six-year war between the Khartoum government led by President Omar al-Bashir and the ethnic "African" majority of rebels fighting in Darfur.

Al-Bashir, who has been indicted by the International Criminal Court on charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity in connection with Darfur, depends on the petro-dollars that flow into the country from China and other countries who buy Sudanese oil.

Getting China, which routinely turns a blind eye to Africa's turmoil as long as its investments turn profits, to help pressure Sudan to change its Darfur policy, would be a huge accomplishment. China has long denied responsiblity for arming or financing Sudan's role in the Darfur conflict.

But China is just the first stop.

Gration then meets with counterparts from Russia, Britain, France and the European Union in Doha, Qatar, which has been a broker of the Darfur peace talks.

He then travels to London to reconvene a Sudan diplomatic troika of the United States, Britain and Norway.

In London Gration sits down with the Contact Group on Sudan -- Canada, the European Union, France, Netherlands, Norway, Britain and the United States -- which is following up on the 2005 Comprehensive Peace Agreement.

The agreement, as most know, ended 22 years of war between Sudan's north and south, the longest civil war in Africa that led to the deaths of around 2 million people and displaced millions more.

Critical to that deal was the sharing of oil revenues between Khartoum and South Sudan -- a source of conflict between the two entities.

Looming in the background of these talks are Sudanese national elections scheduled for February of next year and an independence referendum for South Sudan in 2011.

Whether either will happen is in doubt. Already the Khartoum government has pushed South Sudanese Dinka tribesmen out of the oil-rich Abyei region and is said to be behind ethnic clashes deeper in South Sudan which have killed at least 700 to 800 people in the past couple of months.

The Contact Group last met in Brussels in December. High on the agenda this time has to be what the international community can and will do to insure that the elections take place -- events that are critical to both peace in Sudan and stability in the region.

This will not be easy, and most likely will be resisted by al-Bashir and his National Congress Party in Khartoum which is loathe to let the south secede, just as they cling to the desire to remake Darfur into a pro-Khartoum ethnic "Arab" province.

A critical stop on the Gration tour will be his stop in Paris to meet not only with senior French officials, but with the leader of the Sudan Liberation Army, a rebel faction headed by Abdul Wahid Mohammed Nur, self-exiled in France.

As leader of one of the key rebel groups, Nur has refused to engage in peace talks with Sudan unless and until Sudan not only ceases hostilities in Darfur, but withdraws.

Considering the history of Darfur and the ICC charges against al-Bashir and two others in Sudan, a ranking cabinet minister and a janjaweed militia commander, the demands seem reasonable.

One of the major failures of peace talks for Darfur has been the fracturing of the rebels into some 20 groups. This has allowed Sudan to point fingers at the rebels as the primary impediment to peace and deflect blame from themselves.

Uniting or consolidating the rebels would be a major step forward. Gration will try to convince Nur to drop some of his demands and join the peace process.

State Department spokesman Ian Kelly described the trip as an effort by the State Department to "align positions" in the international community on the Darfur peace process.

It is an interesting choice of words, but appropriate.

Although the peace mission in Darfur is technically under the 2007 United Nations and African Union joint peacekeeping force called UNAMID, it has languished under a lack of commitment from contributors and leadership, largely from the diplomatic ineptitude of the Bush administration.

Gration is attempting to provide that leadership.

The U.S., the region, and the world have nothing to lose and much to gain. If the international community and the rebels can show something of a united front on Darfur, it might get the begrudging agreement of the Sudanese government to reverse its decision to expel 13 humanitarian organizations from Darfur after the ICC warrants were issued against al-Bashir.

This would be good news for millions of Darfuris stranded by the forced abandonment of the aid groups.

But it also might lay the groundwork for serious efforts to end the six-year conflict that has claimed 300,000 lives and forced more than 2.2 million people to flee.