Monday, November 30, 2009

Holbrooke pushes for a SUPER envoy

It seems like October's explosive scandal, in which U.N Deputy Ambassador, American Peter Gailbraith essentially accused his boss, Kai Eide, of collusion with the corrupt Karzai government, has not fully played itself out yet. U.S Special Envoy Richard Holbrooke, who has no love lost for President Karzai himself, is pushing for the appointment of a high-level foreign official to serve as "super-envoy" alongside Karzai. Basically a glorified babysitter to make sure Karzai is keeping honest on his pledge to crack down on corruption. Holbrooke is advocating such a strategy both because of its success in Bosnia, where he was one of the top brokers, and because he "believes the UN mission is ineffectual and soft on the Afghan government's alarming record of corruption." This has caused a fissure among NATO allies, with Canada and some European seeing this as a slight against Kai Eide, and Holbrooke responding, 'Yeah, dude, exactly.'
Meanwhile, Karzai is likely terrified of an American or Brit actually observing his corrupt government in action, but hopeful deep down that he could spin any such appointment as imperialistic meddling.

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