How rapid was Galbraith’s departure? So rapid that he’s still listed on the mission’s Website, smiling away, and the U.N. still cites his”many years of humanitarian and security policy experience.”

“I repeat that the war on terrorism is not inside Afghanistan, as was the case in the past. This war is not in our homes, in our villages, or [winnable by] arresting our people. This war should be pursued inside terrorist sanctuaries and training centers, and they are all outside Afghanistan, as is being proven now.”

My emphasis. That sounds a whole lot like a rejection of Gen. Stanley McChrystal’s approach to the war, which he recently explained to The Washington Post’s Greg Jaffe as “look[ing] at those parts of the country that are most important — and those typically, in an insurgency, are the population centers.” And sure, there’s a certain amount of expectation among U.S. observers that Karzai will and needs to pander to nationalistic sentiment. But it’s also difficult to spool those comments back should Karzai use them to win on Thursday. His point that there aren’t “terrorist sanctuaries” in Afghanistan anymore has been raised by counterinsurgency and Afghanistan-war critics for the last several weeks. By implication, Karzai is opening up more of a door to reconciling with the Taliban than he has to date — a good overview of that comes in today’s New York Times — by ruling the Afghan-centric organization out of the cohort of legitimate enemies.

There absolutely is and I don’t think it is necessarily not possible with the Taliban. Most of the fighters we see in Afghanistan are Afghans, some with foreign cadre with them. But most we don’t see are deeply ideological or even politically motivated; most are operating for pay; some are under a commander’s charismatic leadership; some are frustrated with local leaders.

So I believe there is significant potential to go after what I would call mid- and low-level Taliban fighters and leaders and offer them re-integration into Afghanistan under the constitution.

Notice two things. First, that’s the position adopted by the Afghan government. Second, it doesn’t say a thing about negotiations or ceasefires with the Taliban. The Taliban see little reason to talk to the government since they perceive themselves to be winning. On Monday, a government-announced ceasefire in Baghdis broke down “within hours.” Josh Foust has more on the folly of additional negotiations. Tough as it can be to hear, the incentive structure for the Taliban right now doesn’t favor negotiations; it favors fighting. It’s up to McChrystal to change that dynamic.

“Now I have instructed, in consultation with clergy of the country, that the law be revised and any article that is not in keeping with the Afghan constitution and Islamic Sharia must be removed from this law,” Karzai said.

Juan Cole:

The government’s pledge to amend the law so as to forbid marital rape misses the point. Afghanistan has a civil code on personal status, and all citizens should be under it.

The United States isn’t cool with this, according to the Wall Street Journal’s Matthew Rosenberg:

Washington signaled its displeasure at the prospect of a spring vote, with the State Department saying it believes August elections are “the best means to assure every Afghan citizen would be able to express his or her political preference in a secure environment.”

At a breakfast meeting Friday with members of Karzai’s government, Afghan ministers explained away Karzai’s decision as being entirely civic-minded. To the extent I could understand their reasoning, they said he worries that a caretaker government wouldn’t be in Afghanistan’s best interest.

What’s interesting is that since this draft apparently went from Afghan Defense Minister Abdul Rahim Wardak to a NATO diplomat in Afghanistan on Jan. 10, the Pentagon has gone a fair way toward quietly endorsing its principles. Defense Secretary Bob Gates emphasized putting an “Afghan face” on U.S. military operations. Two weeks ago, Wardak penned an accord with Gen. David McKiernan, the U.S./NATO commanding general in Afghanistan, that integrated U.S.-Afghan planning for operations “throughout all levels,” according to a spokesman for U.S. and NATO forces I talked to.

Though his statements may be intended to serve his own internal political purposes — Karzai is running for another term as president next year — his critique should still give Americans pause.

This is something you often hear from U.S. officials in reference not only to Karzai and Afghanistan but about Iraq — especially about the Status of Forces Agreement that caps the U.S. occupation. And it’s basically a way of saying that opposition to U.S. policy can be safely ignored because it’s merely a sop to foreign publics. (Tim, I know you don’t mean it that way. I had been meaning to get at this point sometime as it was and you helped me out here.) And that’s insane, arrogant and self-defeating. Even assuming it’s in fact true, it should tell you something barometrically significant if Afghan or Iraqi politicians have to demonstrate that they’re not American puppets.

When I was in Afghanistan in the fall, I didn’t hear any Pashtun tell me the U.S. had to get out. But if Karzai has to say stuff like this, maybe I need to consider selection bias.

Should everything be on the table? Who should be brought in and who should be left out?

Nir Rosen: “A lot of these former Taliban and Hekmatyar commanders say use local mullahs” as intermediators with the Karzai government. “You have to use someone respected by both sides… everyone seems to believe that local tribes, local mullahs… and the Saudis should have” a role as brokers as well.

Seth Jones of RAND: So many components to the insurgency. “I think the better response is what’s been historical in Afghanistan: negotiating with local power.” Tribes, jirgas, etc. It’s difficult, “but if anyone has the ability to enforce agreements on the ground, it’s these sorts of institutions.”

Christine Fair: Pakistani negotiations with the Taliban have been “ratifications of defeat on the ground.” Without “any ability to verify” Taliban compliance. They were a joke, a separate peace, legitimizing Taliban leaders. In the tribal areas, “the so-called jirgas often held up as a pathway to peace have been fundamentally eviscerated” and replaced by religious and Taliban figures. “I’m dubious, especially in the tribal areas,” that negotiating with the Taliban in Pakistan could be productive, “since their goals are antithetical to the state.”

The whole thing has been sub rosa, occurring under the auspices of the Saudis for plausible deniability, and not really believed to have been fruitful.

Until now.

It’s a brief item, but The Los Angeles Times reports that the Taliban says the talks are underway:

Abdul Salam Zaeef, the Taliban’s former ambassador to Pakistan, said the hard-line militants sat with Afghan officials and Saudi King Abdullah over an important religious meal in Saudi Arabia late last month. But he denied that the get-together could be construed as peace talks.

A spokesman for Afghan President Hamid Karzai declined to comment.

Who knows where this will lead.

But if Karzai decides to talk to the Taliban, Washington has no argument against supporting him.

Afghan Presisent Hamid Karzai (U.S. Dept. of Defense)

On Friday, President George W. Bush will host his most stalwart ally in the seven-year U.S. war in Afghanistan: Afghan President Hamid Karzai. The relationship between the two men is notably warm — “We’re proud of you, proud of the work you’re doing,” Bush told Karzai during their last meeting in Washington — something understandable, given that Washington ensured Karzai’s rise from an obscure lieutenant of the deceased anti-Taliban warrior, Ahmed Shah Massoud, to president of Afghanistan.

But for the first time in Karzai’s meteoric ascent — and ahead of national elections scheduled for next year — Afghans are beginning to express disillusionment with the president. Corruption, instability and tough economic times are starting to turn even Karzai’s fellow Pashtuns against him. While the anti-Karzai antipathy is building, some experts wonder if Washington has blundered into an Afghanistan policy without a Plan B.

Illustration by: Matt Mahurin

“The Bush administration has taken to having a Maliki-Musharraf-Karzai complex,” said Nathaniel Fick, a veteran of Afghanistan and Iraq who is now with the Center for a New American Security. He was referring to Iraq’s Nouri al-Maliki and the deposed Pakistani dictator, Pervez Musharraf. “It’s slow to criticize its anointed allies,” Fick explained.

Barnett Rubin, an Afghanistan expert at New York University, expanded on this theme. “There is a lot of sentiment against President Karzai among people of all ethnic groups,” Rubin said, “I imagine, given the situation in Afghanistan, there would be resentment against anyone who was president.”

A recent two-week trip through eastern Afghanistan, an overwhelmingly Pashtun area, revealed a populace that seemed deeply unhappy with the levels of corruption in the Karzai government. While many people interviewed seemed unconcerned about whether Karzai is personally corrupt — though his brother, Ahmed Wali Karzai, is suspected of being a major drug dealer — they were worried that Karzai is unprepared to lead Afghans out of their current security and economic crises.

“Karzai is a good guy,” Zareen, an elderly farmer in southwestern Paktia province, interviewed about 10 days ago, said through a translator. “We want [aid] money from foreign countries [that Karzai secures]. But there is corruption in the government, so the money is not distributed.”

Zareen’s brother dismissed the local council, known as a shura, as a band of ineffective thieves. “All of them are people of the area,” he said through translation, referring to the shura’s members, “and they just promise, they don’t implement. When the government says it will help, it just steals stuff. There are steps of corruption: Karzai, then senior people, then the governor, then the [district commissioner] — they all steal. There is nothing left for the people.”

An assessment of neighboring Paktika Province, prepared in 2007 by a Human Terrain Team — a group of anthropologists and political scientists working with the U.S. military — revealed similar disillusionment. “People tired of the Taliban because they beat them,” a tribal area in the district of Kushamond told the team. “Now, if this government [also] beats them, what should the people do?”

In the province, the team wrote, “Elders expressed frustration at their inability to engage with the [Karzai government] and [U.S. military] elements responsible for house searches and the death of a mentally-disabled teenager.”

There isn’t much polling done in Afghanistan, but much of what exists is conducted by Craig Charney’s New York-based firm. While Charney said he could not share his results with The Washington Independent, he said his latest poll, conducted last November, found substantial but eroding support for Karzai.

“His favorabilities were in the 70s or 80s, and his positives for his job approval was 55 or 60 [percent],” Charney said in a telephone interview, “But it was down from two years before — which was honeymoon time.” Karzai, he continued, “could have eroded some [in the polls], but still be in a strong position.”

Rubin, of New York University, who is the author of “The Fragmentation of Afghanistan,” said that Karzai’s rising unpopularity is related to his inefficacy as a leader — something hard-wired into post-Taliban Afghanistan. “Only one person has any real power,” Rubin explained. “It’s basically a monarchical constitution with an elected leader. It took the 1964 constitution and made the head of state elected instead of a king with a prime minister.”

The problem is that while one person essentially governs the country, his power is, in essence, limited by Afghanistan’s heavy reliance on Washington. “Hamid Karzai does not run [the Afghan army],” Rubin continued. “It’s run by the Dept. of Defense… In Afghanistan, the U.S. runs most of the [aid and development] programs outside the government, and Hamid Karzai has nothing to do with them. That’s why he feels so ineffectual. He doesn’t feel empowered.”

Several Afghans interviewed by The Washington Independent said they would not vote for Karzai in next year’s election, considering him too weak to govern. One, a doctor in the eastern border province of Khost, said he would sooner leave Afghanistan than see Karzai re-elected, fearing a likely deterioration in security.

Fick heard many similar comments during an trip to Afghanistan in August, but said Washington is at a disadvantage because this is no plausible alternative to Karzai. “We met with half a dozen Cabinet officials, a dozen members of Parliament — and everyone put forward his own name as a candidate” for president, Fick said. “But in terms of who actually has a national constituency, it’s sort of hard to say.”

Charney agreed. “The bottom line is that Karzai — despite all his problems and weaknesses — is still the only national figure Afghanistan has got,” he said.

Be that as it may, Fick feared that U.S. policy has become too reliant on a single figure — and could be thrown into turmoil if Karzai loses the next election. Avoiding such personalization of policy is easier said than done, however.

“It [requires] a return to interest-based realism, in a way,” Fick said, “to not meet with foreign leaders and say, ‘I looked into his eyes and got a sense of his soul.’” Fick was referring to what Bush famously said on his first meeting with Russia’s Vladimir Putin, who invaded Georgia despite vociferous U.S. objections this summer.

If Washington is to turn away from being beholden to whomever wins the 2009 Afghan election, Rubin said, Afghanistan’s relationship with the international community will have to change — and changed in way that, somewhat paradoxically, strengthens the presidency. “If President Karzai makes a decision,” Rubin said, “in an hour some [NATO] ambassador is gonna come in and argue with him. He doesn’t control his troops, and doesn’t control the money. That’s a situation that breeds corruption.”

Rubin emphasized this point. “We have to have a strategy focused on building the Afghan government,” he said, “and not on accomplishing short-term goals.”