Former chief UN election monitor Grant Kippen says that Hamid Karzai's anti-Western claims fail to resonate "with anybody." (Karzai Accused Of 'Fabrication' As Rift With West Deepens - Front Page, April 3). But Mr. Karzai's need to bite the hand that feeds him derives from an equally compelling need to stay the hands that might kill him.
In any tribal society, the leaders must be perceived as powerful and able to confer largesse to their supporters. It won't do for Mr. Karzai to be perceived as little more than a puppet of the West, as such a development would speed along his eventual assassination, as it did for King Abdullah of Jordan and Anwar Sadat of Egypt.
Just like the former Soviet Union, the Western occupiers of Afghanistan underestimate the tenacity of tribalism and their fantasies of robust, egalitarian democracies springing up in west and central Asia do not alter these sobering realities. Mr. Karzai's unenviable task is trying to co-operate more with the West without being labelled a collaborator by his own people.