By WILLIAM DALRYMPLE - How Is Hamid Karzai Still Standing? --- It was nearly midnight during the first week of Ramadan. Most business in Kabul had come to a halt, and Karzai, having more time on his hands than usual, had agreed to spend three evenings with me talking about Afghanistan’s future. When I arrived at the palace, security was exceptionally tight. On each visit, my papers and passport were examined seven times. I went through three body scanners, and my BlackBerry and pens were confiscated. When I at last gained admittance, the palace was all but deserted. Only the president’s personal bodyguards were around, clutching their M-16 assault rifles and stalking about under the lights in double-breasted pinstripe suits. - There was good reason for the heightened vigilance. --- Because of all this, I anticipated meeting a careworn Karzai, coming to terms with the unraveling of his regime. Instead, on our very first evening, he bounded into the room and grasped my hand firmly. I commented how well he looked considering the stress, and he laughed: “I don’t feel under pressure,” he said. “The first days of Ramadan are completely off days — nobody comes. Today was my first totally free day in all these 10 years! I did not even leave my room.” His wife, he said, was in Belgium with the children. “I just took naps and read my newspapers.” --- The nervous tic that often makes Karzai wince with his left eye, and which is said to get worse when he is upset, was almost absent. His robust health also gave the lie to the rumor that in adversity, Karzai had become addicted to various narcotics. The rumors had gained credence in Kabul’s gossip mill in part because of the president’s mood swings and fits of anger. They are nonetheless nonsense, according to those who know him well. “He’s very fit indeed,” says Amrullah Saleh, his former security chief, now a political opponent. “He takes at least an hour’s exercise each night and exhausts the guards that have to keep up with him.” Mahmood agrees: “He’s very disciplined physically. And he’s extremely moderate in his eating. You know how delicious our melons are? I’ve often seen his hand hovering over a second slice, and then he resists. He has steely discipline.” After a day of fasting, however, there was no such restraint. As Karzai munched his way through a huge platter of Afghan melons, grapes and figs, as well as mountains of tiny cherries, he merrily began denouncing what he described as the “betrayal” of Afghanistan and its people by what he referred to as his so-called Western allies. --- The United States, Karzai said, was now plotting with Pakistan to abandon his regime and replace it with a divided Afghanistan, too weak to resist U.S. demands. To this end, America had long been deliberately destabilizing the region: “Has the war on terror made this region less radical or more radical?” he asked. “Is this the unintended consequence? Or has this been the result of policy? -- “The picture is now becoming clear,” he continued, thumping the table for emphasis. “The West wanted to use Afghanistan, to have bases here, to create a situation whereby in the end Afghanistan would be so weak that it would agree to a deal in which Afghanistan’s interests will not even be secondary, but tertiary and worse.” --- The Western media was also party to the plot — underrating his successes as instructed by the governments of the West. The New York Times is, he believes, deliberately negative about his achievements. “They behave more like the Pravda of the Soviet Union. The difference is that Pravda does not have the mask of democracy on its face. The New York Times does.” --- Yet however overheated his rhetoric, Karzai is personally charming and has the ability to win over even his critics. During our evenings together, he took pains to assure me that he still believed in democracy and that he enjoyed Western newspapers and movies, particularly British ones. He also spoke about his love for the British royal family, recalling that Prince Charles once invited him for a weekend in Balmoral: “He is a good man: tremendously hospitable . . . Camilla an excellent lady.” As far as he was concerned, he had not changed his position; it was his allies who had let him down. - Did he really feel that he was betrayed by America? I asked. - As a nation,” he replied immediately, “yes, very much.” --- I pointed out that this would come as a surprise to many Americans, given the investment in lives (around 2,000) and money (around $500 billion). “Look,” he replied, “Admiral Mullen said in one of his very important statements to the U.S. Senate, that the Haqqani network” — a leading insurgent group allied with the Taliban — “is the veritable arm of the ISI” — Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence agency. “Those are his words. . . . So if they know that the terrorist bases — the Taliban bases, the Haqqani bases — are in Pakistan, how could they be killing people and bombing in Afghanistan? This is a betrayal.” -- “And for you this is the big issue?” I asked. -- “Civilian casualties — that is the biggest issue. I don’t care about their money, spent well or spent badly. We can live without that money. It’s the reason for which America came to Afghanistan: the fight against terror. They didn’t fight terrorism where it was, where it still is. They continued damaging Afghanistan and its people.” -- Returning to the subject the following evening, he said: “I would like to give a message through you to the West. Pressure tactics will not work on me. We are only looking for a fair deal — a deal in which the interests of Afghanistan are kept in mind. . . . You will not get an Afghanistan divided into fiefdoms. We will not allow it. Over our dead bodies.” - More, NYTimes, at: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/24/magazine/how-is-hamid-karzai-still-standing.html