As he contemplates retirement next year, Afghan President Hamid Karzai appears to have one over-riding ambition – to ensure that his people do not remember him as a puppet of the United States.
Karzai will stand down after elections in April 2014, and his final year in office promises to be turbulent as he launches strident criticism of the US government, which has backed him since the fall of the Taliban in 2001.
In the latest of a series of verbal attacks, this week he accused the US of colluding with the Taliban to justify the presence of 100,000 international troops in Afghanistan.
Karzai has a record of inflammatory outbursts which his detractors say are evidence that he is unstable, unreliable and prone to off-the-cuff remarks that make little sense and cause serious damage.
But others say his words are carefully chosen and speak directly to Afghan youth, often illiterate and poorly-educated population.
One independent observer with a recent insight into Karzai’s state of mind is British historian William Dalrymple, who spent 90 minutes discussing his new book with the president at a private audience in Kabul last week.
“I was in Pakistan before hand and everyone there from the foreign ministry downwards told me he was a nutter and off his trolley,” Dalrymple told.
“British diplomats told me that he was at best ’emotional’. My own impression was that he is a charismatic, erudite and very intelligent man who knows exactly what he is saying.”
Dalrymple said Karzai had spoken of the fate of Shah Shuja, the puppet leader whom British colonialists put on the throne in Kabul in 1839 and who was later assassinated.
“His view was that the US were doing to him what the British had done to Shah Shuja, which was to treat him as a puppet and to use him for their own interests,” Dalrymple said.
“Karzai thinks Shah Shuja didn’t stress his independence enough, and… I do think he is concerned with his legacy.”
Dalrymple also said that during their meeting Karzai aired the allegations that the US and Taliban were somehow acting in concert — remarks that were to blind-side US officials when the president repeated them in a public speech on Sunday, during a visit by new Pentagon chief Chuck Hagel.
Karzai, 55, was a darling of the West when he became leader of Afghanistan after the US-led invasion that ousted the Taliban.
Speaking perfect English, moderate in his views and stylishly dressed in a tunic and lambskin hat, he charmed then US president George W Bush, who praised him as a man of “honour, courage and skill”.
But US-Afghan ties became increasingly strained as the bloody Taliban insurgency gained pace, American casualties mounted and Karzai’s government became a by-word for corruption.
