Kabul - Afghan President Hamid Karzai is working his crunch time magic, recruiting long-time enemies and challengers to forge a real-life Afghan "Survivor"-style alliance meant to ensure Karzai's re-election.

While the international community is focused on the ‘end’ of the election process, it is actually the beginning of the political frenzy. The U.S. has been quick to criticize the ‘warlord ticket’ that Karzai has crafted to garner minority votes, but Karzai has strengthened and harnessed the very political machine the U.S. helped create.

In recent years, Karzai's popularity waned as his government was singled out as one of the reasons why Afghanistan was devolving not evolving, prompting doubts about whether Karzai would be re-elected. Nepotism, favoritism, corruption and the general lack of functioning system had created frustration and anger. Many parts of the country have “shadow governments” with Taliban nominated titular heads; other areas have no government representation outside of dusty police or army checkpoints.

Then in a bold move, Karzai made a series of significant campaign concessions that folded in the critical minority vote: Tajik, Hazara and Uzbek.

The linchpin of Karzai’s re-election strategy has been his co-opting of key United Front minority leaders including Hizb-e-Wahdat leader, Hajji Mohammed Mohaqiq, and Hizb-e-Junibish-e-Milli leader, Abdul Rashid Dostum. The co-opting of these Cold War era warlords is significant in that during the last seven years, and particularly in the few years immediately following the Bonn Agreement, Karzai attempted to “hyper-centralize his power,” according to a source in the Abdullah camp. Even many of the key competitors presented a similar centralized concept that only served to reinforce the sense of isolation and marginalization of the urban, central and northern minorities.

Outsiders have always viewed Afghanistan as a Kabul-centric country with an unhealthy obsession with Pashtun-centric leadership. State Department officials often assume that a Pashtun, ideally with tribal ties to royal lines, must be in control; ergo Karzai and his claim to political legitimacy and U.S. support. In practical applications, Karzai sought to split traditional power bases by injecting cronies into hostile areas and blocking the critical constitutional reform required to create a bottom-up elected government instead of the current top down government of appointees. Appointees were not only strangers in their chosen region, but showed more loyalty to their financial advancement rather than the creation of a functioning government. In places where a crony was absent, positions like judges could be bought for $100,000. The application of bribes (baksheesh) instead of justice would quickly repay the large investment. In areas where the appointee’s position was sure to be tenuous, they rapidly expanded their business relationships to ensure a solid retirement. These and many more violations of public trust were so egregious that the corruption of the Karzai government, police and judicial system opened the door for the Taliban to proclaim themselves dispensers of rapid justice and claimers of the moral high ground.

Mohaqiq and Dostum have had, until very recently, rocky relationships with Karzai at best. Mohaqiq left the government after supposedly irreconcilable differences with Karzai. Dostum was, until a recently as Sunday night, “in exile” in Ankara after an infamous incident where Dostum was accused of physically attacking ethnic Turkmen leader Akbar Bai which later led to a confrontation at his home in Kabul with Afghan police officials among other more grave charges. In reality, Dostum reached a deal with Karzai where convicted criminal Akbar Bai agreed to drop charges and then left to spend time with his family in Ankara. This tacit arrangement satisfied Dostum’s need to save face and Karzai’s need not to fully alienate the Uzbek/Turkmen constituency.

Although Dostum won 10% of the vote in the 2004 elections, it is clear that no one ethnicity can win, but if united the Tajik/Uzbek/Hazara vote can heavily affect the 50% a candidate needs. Dostum, as an individual, has been the target of a number of allegations by his Tajik rival, Usted Atta Mohammed, and the Pashtun minority in the north. The U.S. began a rumor campaign on yet to be investigated mass graves at Daisht I Leili to marginalize him before the last elections and these accusations resurfaced just before this election. The U.S. State Department, who remains steadfast in their Pashtun-centric view of the country, does not like Dostum.

Dostum’s supporters are more pragmatic. “It is better to work from the inside than the outside,” one senior party official commented. There are 12 written guarantees from Karzai with the promise to dramatically increase the Junbish presence in the government.

More telling is the common refrain heard while AfPax attended private Karzai stumping parties complete with Pathan style dancing and private whisky rooms. As soon as the Karzai relative leaves with assurances of his host’s votes, the consensus is “We are Karzai’s friends now, but after the elections....well, we shall see.” Afghans intend to see just how workable this new spirit of cooperation is but all agree that there are further deals to be made after Karzai’s initial deals.

Motivations for the two Central Asian ‘big men’ acceding to the Karzai campaign are varied and are likely to be very short lived.

Hajji Mohaqiq is using this opportunity to resolve grievances among the Hazara constituency. Unlike Dostum, Mohaqiq spoke publicly about some of Karzai’s promises to him and what he intended to get out of stumping for the incumbent in the Hazarajat. Mohaqiq claims that Karzai will allot his men five yet to be named cabinet positions once his second official term is reassured. (Dostum’s Uzbek have supposedly been allotted four cabinet positions, but a high ranking Junbish-e-Milli member would not confirm or deny this.) In 2004, Karzai partitioned Uruzgan Province that straddles the Pashtun belt and the Hazara central core into two provinces creating a new predominately Hazara province of Daykundi. In 2009, Mohaqiq is requesting two further partitions of Ghazni and Wardak Provinces into two new Hazara provinces from the regions of Jaghori and Behsood respectively.

An almost completely unreported conflict in central Afghanistan has been another key election issue for the Hazaras. There has been fighting between local Hazaras and nomadic Pashtun Kuchis on grazing issues and contentions of land grabs by the nomads. According to Mohaqiq’s campaign spokesman in Kabul’s Pul-e-Sarkh neighborhood, Karzai is claiming he will at least temporarily settle the Kuchis and eject them from Hazara lands. The inter-communal tension between the two groups and Karzai’s attempts to assuage the Hazaras of their ethnic sovereignty in central Afghanistan could be a vote coup for the President seeing as the Kuchi vote will be negligible at best. Another of these concessions involves the construction of a new highway linking Kabul directly to the western city of Herat, thereby eliminating the need for a degree of Kandahari transit, bolstering the Hazara region’s economy and strengthening trade links with eastern Iran as a result. A trans-Hazarajat road may also further isolate Kandahar and Helmand and inadvertently continue to stoke the Taliban insurgency in the Pashtun heartland

The U.S. may be the only political party caught flat footed in Karzai’s round of bargains. The State Department has reacted strongly to the “warlord ticket.” This approach is ham-fisted and unproductive since all of the “warlords” are current or former members of the Karzai government. Western Tajik leader Ismael Khan was formerly on the U.S. State Department and military ‘no talk’ list while serving as the Minister of Water and Power. Northern Uzbek leader Dostum, a staunch ally of the U.S., brought about the Taliban surrender 2001. Today, however, Dostum is a mostly ceremonial military leader and also a figurehead of a major political party. Tajik Field Marshall Fahim was Ahmed Shah Massoud’s intelligence officer and main CIA go-between when Massoud was an Agency asset in 2000 and 2001. (Karzai originally wanted Massoud’s former foreign minister Abdullah as his running mate but Abdullah chose to run against Karzai). ISI supported Gulbuddin “Hek” Hekmatyar who also supports Karzai. “Hek” has worked his way in and out of the Afghan government. He now finds himself both aligned and spurned by the Taliban (the old school Quetta Taliban despise him for the destruction of Kabul the small T Pakistani Taliban find his contacts and access to the east of Afghanistan helpful).

The “warlord” coalition is a temporary Karzai construct and necessary convenience with much greater impact after the elections. The focus should not be on the historical and ceremonial figureheads but on the number of constituents that the inclusion of the Tajik, Hazara and Uzbek minority brings. All these parties have lesser-known, erudite, modern shapers behind them. Like many Afghan power players, they keep a low profile but provide high influence in shaping policies.

Their new pragmatism and engagement will actually bring to fruition the U.S. plan to ensure a healthy, vibrant political process that will dissolve the Taliban’s toehold and claim to legtimacy. By also showing that Afghanistan has an inclusive political structure, it also reinforces the idea that even the Pashtun and Pakistani-centric Taliban has a chance in joining Karzai’s elaborate game and is incredibly vulnerable to the host of larger than life personalities he has courted. There are also important nuances. According to several indigenous political sources in Kabul, many believe Dostum’s paramount concern is his legacy among his Uzbek and Turkmen followers and his place in northern Afghan history rather than the here and now of the present Afghan political environment. The same can be said for Fahim whose post-Taliban business practices have pushed him outside of polite circles. The Hazara/Uzbek alignment has always been one of necessity, and the addition of the Tajik was the essential structure of the north vs south war that led to the Taliban being the de facto rural southern Pashtun tribal political party. Although Karzai has courted them, the Taliban view his role as that of U.S. lackey and his track record in the south has created a much larger “fence sitting” Pashtun majority. Afghans feel caught between the false authority but historical legitimacy of the Taliban and the inept but official Karzai government. If true inclusiveness springs from Karzai keeping his pre-election promises, expect reduced tensions in northern Pashtun pockets, Tajik rural areas, and strengthened government confidence in the north and west.

According to a high-ranking Junbish representative, “We don’t care about what will happen to (Hazara-Uzbek) alliance, our main concern right now is the election.” Defending the Junbish decision to stand with Hamid Karzai, the representative said that Junbish talked “with all of the candidates” and decided that Karzai “is good for us.” Gaining the votes of the central and northern provinces is essential for Karzai to stay in power. The predominantly Uzbek, Turkmen and Hazara provinces are among the most stable in Afghanistan when compared to the Pashtun south and east, and voting in the Turkic regions is predicted to be the least tumultuous part of the balloting process.

The wild card for today’s election is how Karzai’s Machiavellian plans bump up against the earnest campaign of Abdullah. This has crated splits in Junbish and other parties as some younger, more idealistic party members cannot swear allegiance to the Karzai family when there is a viable political alternative like Abdullah. This split from the more pragmatic leadership was so dangerous that Dostum was flown in on his friend’s, Zamarai Kamgar, aircraft. (Kamgar, an ethnic Tajik from Taskhent, Uzbekistan, is an ardent Dostum supporter and owns Kam Air).

Hizb-e-Junbish-e-Milli had a split before Dostum’s return where some of the party’s younger members turned up at a rally supporting Abdullah while he campaigned in Faryab Province near the Turkmen border. An Abdullah campaign insider claimed a few had even made their own posters showing Dostum siding next to Abdullah. A Junbish spokesman claimed the party was fully behind Karzai, but admitted that a small element had broken away out of frustration. However, they would not affect to party’s core political directive of supporting the incumbent. Hizb-e-Wahdat is also divided between Abdul Karim Khalili, currently one of Karzai’s two vice presidents, and Hajji Mohammed Mohaqiq, Wahdat founder and leader of the second faction. Mohaqiq’s spokesman stated that Khalili and Mohaqiq were in agreement as far as supporting Karzai’s reelection, but things make shake out differently for the provincial elections in the Hazarajat where the two men may be pitted against one another. “We (the two Wahdat factions) are united for just the election,” Mohaqiq’s man in Kabul vaguely stated.

Karzai’s power plays of the last months are a massive u-turn from the years of post-Bonn governance where he tried to weaken the warlords by attempting to create a strong central top-down state structure in Kabul and force Afghanistan’s other power centers into subordination. His strategy was U.S. mandated and part of the traditional COIN strategy used by Special Forces and the CIA to overthrow governments. The initial support of the existing (Northern Alliance) and invented (Eastern Alliance) “insurgent” groups required a degradation of armed and political capability to allow a pliant U.S. friendly leader to emerge. The U.S. underestimated the Karzai family’s ability to game both U.S. and Afghan interests and find themselves watching the election as outsiders rather than internal players. Post election will bring a flurry of new initiatives to rope off Karzai’s new tough stance on the U.S. presence since, if he keeps Dostum, Fahim, Khan, Hekmatyar and Mohahiq firmly in his camp, he now has the basic tools to defeat the increasingly bellicose and oppressive Taliban through legitimacy of government. This is something the U.S. has worked hard for, but may find it talking hold on its own accord. Afghans are masters of political machinations and frequently misread the musical chairs of picking winners and dropping losers as being “wiley” when, in fact, it is the basic construct of all politics. People go with the power and Afghans clearly feel empowered to make political choices this election. Even ballot stuffing is an equal opportunity activity. Voters may buy fraudulently obtained ballot cards and cast them for any candidate they choose.

Karzai has also developed working relationships with Pakistan, Iran, Russia and China that seeks to balance tenuous U.S. influence. His public statements are often openly critical against the U.S. and he seeks to regain the golden era of the 70’s where Afghanistan was able to strike a balance and “have many ardent suitors but no nagging wife,” as one Afghan politician told AfPax.

AfPax interviewed spokesmen from the three parties and they concurred they all want to be with the winner; however, the winner is yet to be defined. If a runoff election between Karzai and Abdullah is to occur, it is not assured that the Hazara and Uzbek minority parties will stick by Karzai’s side if it is not clear Karzai will prevail.