Afghan President Hamid Karzai speaks at the country's Independent Election Commission in Kabul on Thursday.Ahmad Masood/Reuters
The erratic behaviour of Hamid Karzai, the President of Afghanistan, threatens to undo much of what the West, including Canada, has achieved for his country.
Mr. Karzai's charge that some Western officials took part in fraud in the presidential election last year, in which he himself was victorious, is a singularly futile allegation of motiveless wrongdoing. It is as if he had turned himself into a mere echo of charges against himself.
Even more bizarre are his apparent statements on Saturday to a group of members of the Afghan parliament that, if foreign pressure on him continues, Mr. Karzai could ally himself with the Taliban. Although his spokesman has denied he said this, at least three Afghan MPs have attested to it. Likewise, the Afghan ambassador to Canada, Jawed Ludin, speaking to CTV, dismissed these reports, but with a telling qualification, "Even if he said something like that, it would be just a turn of phrase. And I know him; he has some turns of phrase."
These rash remarks from Mr. Karzai may have broader significance. He seems to be upset that the arrests in Pakistan in February and March of major Taliban officials may have disrupted his own attempts at some accommodation with the Taliban. If so, Mr. Karzai is forgetting that the government of Pakistan must protect itself against the Taliban insurgency in that country, and that Pakistan, a nuclear power, is no less important than Afghanistan. Nuclear weapons under the control of the Taliban would be a grave threat to the whole world, and the West cannot tie the hands of the secular government of Pakistan, just to suit Mr. Karzai's manoeuvres.
The hint by Peter Galbraith, the former deputy UN special representative for Afghanistan, in an interview with MSNBC, that Mr. Karzai may have an opium habit is not based on his direct observation, but his view that Mr. Karzai is impulsive, emotional and "at least slightly off-balance" is strikingly supported by these recent incidents.
The West and Mr. Karzai may be disappointed in each other, but they cannot part company. They must co-operate, and that will be impossible if Mr. Karzai acts and speaks recklessly. Too much has been sacrificed by Canada and other countries, to let Afghanistan return to the control of fanatical Islamists.