Brother, can you spare a pul?

So President Karzai has revealed that he has accepted money from Iran. Definitely not as much as the U.S. has given Afghanistan to tackle its bucketful of problems, but enough to fill a couple of bags. This probably confirms the worst fears those who've always suspected that Iran and Afghanistan were buddying it up somehow. Personally, though, I'm not particularly surprised. Karzai's government hasn't exactly been a paragon of accountability or fairness. What is interesting though is that the announcement follows up a period of pretty shaky U.S.-Afghan relations, and casts doubts on whether the Afghan government is going to go along with American or Iranian interests.

The same article states that Karzai claimed "American officials had leaked information to The New York Times about Iranian payments because of disagreements over the private security companies. " Whether this is true or not, it does reflect the issues that these private companies have played a part in Afghanistan's reconstruction. It's a Catch-22: the government doesn't want what are essentially Western mercenaries going trigger-happy, but without them to protect development projects, Taliban insurgents will hamper progress since local law enforcement is still insufficiently prepared to meet the threat.

The prognosis for U.S. future involvement in Afghanistan is not good at the moment. While many American news sources state that coalition troops are weakening the Taliban and that offensive operations have been a success, Afghan sources state otherwise (for a comprehensive overview, check out Afghan Notebook's entry Operation Dragon Strike and Kandahar). If the situation does not improve soon, public opinion on the war may fall so far that troops will have to withdraw soon from Afghanistan. Looking at the results from the small sample of students I surveyed for my project, the majority feel that the U.S. has been in Afghanistan for too long; this has been the second longest conflict for U.S. involvement, a few months short of Vietnam. And not to be too pessimistic, but we all know how that ended.

There is also a question of how this will affect U.S.-Iran relations (or lack of). Iran's the giant octopus in the Middle East room, and no one's quite sure where it's tentacles are reaching out to, which is what what makes it so unpredictable right now. We can see from Ahmadinejad's recent visit to the U.S. that there is little love for him, and it's partly because he's smart. Real smart, and a smooth talker. In most of his media appearances with pundits such as Larry King, he came looking a lot better than most would like, and without driving any interpreters to collapse from exhaustion during his speeches. There have been some overtures made towards nuclear talks, but even then there is no guarantee with the rapid changes in politics on both sides.

To continue the octopus theme:

RIP Paul (2008-2010)