LONDON: Had the assassin’s bullet or rocket hit their target, Afghan President Hamid Karzai, the attack on Sunday would have been seen as a devastating blow to Nato’s efforts to stabilise the country. Unfortunately the same proposition holds true in life as in death. Mr Karzai, who has survived several assassination attempts, lives to fight another day, but the battle for Afghanistan is no nearer being won.

After six years of US-led military support, security on the ground continues to deteriorate. No more vivid illustration of this is provided the Sunday attack on a military parade in Kabul, in which heavily armed militants got within 100 metres of a target-rich assembly of government ministers, former warlords and foreign diplomats. Two deputies sitting in the front row, 30 yards from where Mr Karzai was standing, were hit. Worse still, there appears to be no plan and no consensus on how to stabilise the country. Senior British and US military sources are openly sceptical about Mr Karzai’s weak leadership, his inability or unwillingness to remove corrupt officials, or to crack down on drug trafficking. As he faces parliamentary and presidential elections next year, there are fears that the country is sliding back into Taliban-style rules, such as the attempt to stop TV channels broadcasting popular Indian soap operas.

The feeling is mutual. In an interview with the New York Times on Saturday, Mr Karzai criticised the British and American conduct of the war. He said US arrests of Taliban militants and their sympathisers were discouraging his efforts to encourage them to lay down their arms. He blamed mistreatment by some warlords and US forces for having driven the Taliban out of the country to Pakistan, where they have regrouped and rearmed. Both the return to Islamic values and Mr Karzai’s increased assertiveness with the foreign countries who installed him in power might be seen as politically motivated. He may be striking a more independent, nationalist posture in the run up to elections. On the other hand, there is truth in what the generals are saying about Mr Karzai.

He is certainly right to say that civilian deaths seriously undermine efforts to fight the Taliban. Nearly 2,000 civilians died as a result of the conflict last year including 240 in air strikes, according to the Afghanistan NGO Safety Office. Where his claims against US and British tactics fall on stonier ground is the account he gives of his own campaign against the Taliban. He said they should not have been forced out of the country, but the weakness of his government was such that he only learned about it “too late”.This is hard to believe. First, the Taliban have not been forced out of the country and are very much in evidence, not only in the 10 per cent of the country they control , but the 30 per cent that the government controls. Second, corruption and kinship count for more than principle. One of the reasons why Mr Karzai vetoed the appointment of Lord Ashdown as a super-envoy, or why he expelled two EU and UN diplomats, was not because they would have thwarted a dialogue with the Taliban. The diplomats were engaged in one. It was because the ensuing dialogue could not have been manipulated by him.

Outgunned in clashes in Helmand, the Taliban is adopting the tactics that suited the insurgency in Iraq so well suicide bombings, roadside bombs, and attacks in the heart of the capital. These are clear warning signs that the Afghan mission is at a turning point. Mr Karzai claims he is the only man to lead the country, but General Pervez Musharraf made similar claims for his leadership of Pakistan. And look what is happening to him: the new civilian government proves there is always an alternative. Without a clear counter-insurgency strategy which involves talking to the Taliban, and a foreign operation which puts aid at its heart, Afghanistan could well follow Iraq’s path.—Dawn/ The Guardian News Service