Obama makes surprise trip to Afghanistan

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates, WASHINGTON and KABUL, Afghanistan — President Obama made a brief, unannounced visit Friday to Afghanistan. But in a scenario that seemed symbolic of star-crossed U.S. relations with the administration of Afghan President Hamid Karzai, the two leaders were unable to meet face to face.

The U.S. president visited American troops at Bagram airfield, a sprawling base north of Kabul.
But a massive dust storm prevented him from making the short helicopter
trip to meet with Karzai at his presidential palace in the capital, as
the two men had planned.

Obama instead reportedly held a videoconference meeting with his Afghan counterpart.

Already-tense relations with Karzai have been
worsened in recent days by leaked U.S. diplomatic cables portraying the
Afghan leader as a weak and paranoid figure at the helm of a government
riddled by corruption.

While the broad outlines of this diplomatic
depiction came as little surprise, the timing was awkward, coming only
days before the White House is expected to complete a major review of the state of the nearly decade-old U.S. military presence in Afghanistan.

This has been the war’s most lethal year for U.S.
forces, and Obama faces intense political pressure to justify the long
and costly conflict — a task made more difficult by his own envoy’s
scathing assessment of Karzai. American criticism of the Afghan
president has been widely reported, but the damning details in the
leaked documents laid bare a relationship beset by mutual mistrust.

At the presidential palace in Kabul, the red carpet was literally rolled up as it became clear that weather conditions would prevent Obama’s visit. Hamid Elmi, the deputy spokesman for Karzai, confirmed that it had been hoped Obama would come to Kabul but conceded flatly: “That will not be happening.”

Obama’s previous trip to Afghanistan,
nine months earlier, was a similarly speedy fly-in, but one that left
lingering feelings of acrimony on both sides. Karzai’s inner circle
deeply resented blunt criticisms leveled on the press plane by James L. Jones, the national security adviser, while the White House concluded that the Afghan administration did not take seriously enough concerns over graft and corruption.

An aide said Obama had not been carrying any “major new piece” of news to deliver to Karzai. The two men met just before Thanksgiving on the sidelines of the NATO summit in Lisbon.

Even the release of diplomatic cables in recent days
did not occasion the need for a detailed conversation between the two
leaders. The Obama administration has “weathered those kinds of
revelations before as it relates to President Karzai and the Afghan
government,” said the aide, deputy national security adviser Ben Rhodes.

Though Obama missed an opportunity Friday to try to
establish some sort of personal chemistry with the increasingly distant
and mercurial Afghan leader, his three-hour trip gave him an
opportunity to meet with U.S. troops — a holiday-season morale boost
amid a long slog of a war.

The two top U.S. officials in Afghanistan — Gen. David H. Petraeus, the commander of all Western troops in the country, and Ambassador Karl Eikenberry — were on hand to greet the president.

In his speech to troops, delivered in a drafty
aircraft hangar, Obama seemingly sought to balance the optimism
expressed of late by his field commanders and a somber acknowledgement
that Western forces face a resilient and resourceful foe.

“We said we were going to break the Taliban’s
momentum; that’s what we’re doing,” the president, clad in a leather
jacket and dark sweater and slacks, told the assembled troops, who
cheered raucously as he listed their branches of service. But he added:
“I don’t need to tell you this is a tough fight. … Progress comes at
a high price.”

American commanders have pointed to significant success in recent months in driving Taliban fighters out of districts surrounding Kandahar city, the hub of the south and the Taliban’s
spiritual base. But it remains to be seen how durable that progress
will prove to be. Senior Western commanders have acknowledged that
insurgents are likely to regroup in the spring after a winter break in Pakistan.

Most of the troops present at Obama’s speech were with the Army’s 101st Airborne Division, which is on its fourth combat deployment in recent years to either Iraq or Afghanistan.

In the moments before the president spoke, his hosts
broadcast a security reminder — ominous to the visitors, but a daily
fact of life for those stationed in Afghanistan.

“If we get indirect fire while this ceremony is
going on,” the announcement went, “stay put. Do not go anywhere. If you
have to do something, get down. Do not move out of this building.”

———

(c) 2010, Tribune Co.

Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services.