While Karzai might be a pain in the you know what, he's got a point --- Karzai has become an expert at sticking his finger in the eye of the United States – the same nation that has expended significant blood and treasure to keep him in power. Some examples include: once calling the Taliban insurgents ravaging his country "brothers", publicly accusing the United States of working with the Taliban to stage bombing attacks, or declaring that if a war broke between the US and Pakistan, he would side with Pakistan. -- But Karzai's latest gaffe is perhaps his worst and most potentially damaging: namely his continued refusal to sign a bilateral security agreement (BSA) with that United States that will keep American troops in the country for the next 10 years. While this latest action is easy to chalk up as another example of Karzai's propensity for irrational, eccentric and brinkmanship-like behavior, there is a deeper backstory here. This blow-up du jour is not some outlier in the US-Afghan relationship, it's the culmination of years upon years of a poorly conceived US political and military strategy in Afghanistan that has treated Karzai and the Afghan people as a sideshow and collateral damage in the US global war against al-Qaida. -- Of course, the question of who is to blame doesn't change the fact that Karzai's current recalcitrance could have potentially disastrous consequences for the country he leads. Failure to affix his signature to the BSA could lead the US to pursue a so-called "zero option" and bring all of its troops home from Afghanistan. This would have a destabilizing cascade effect. First, the likely departure of all NATO troops; and potential cut off of billions in financial assistance from the United States. Considering that the budget of the Afghan security forces is larger than the revenues brought in by the Afghan government, that could be a serious problem and one that could lead to more instability and an even bloodier civil war than we've seen over the past several years. It is small wonder that one of the few political groups in Afghanistan to endorse Karzai's move is the Taliban. -- Why is Karzai playing such a dangerous game of chicken? First, he knows that once he signs the BSA, he will lose all leverage with the United States, particularly in regard to the April presidential election that will choose his successor. Moreover, he appears to truly believe that the US would never actually withdraw all its troops from Afghanistan (no matter how many times US officials say it). But above all, Karzai simply doesn't appear to trust the United States. -- None of this puts Karzai in a positive light, and his recent actions are impossible to defend. But the fight over the BSA is symptomatic of the way in which US policy in Afghanistan has gone far off the rails. Back in 2008 when Obama was running for president, he pledged to focus his energy on the war in Afghanistan, but he did little to prioritize his relationship with Karzai. -- As Obama coldly noted in 2009, during the midst of his Afghan policy review, he wasn't "interested in just being in Afghanistan for the sake of being in Afghanistan" but rather for how it advanced US national security interests. -- For Karzai, the brunt of the US war on terrorism was being borne by his people with little long-term payoff for Afghanistan. When he would say "Al Qaeda was driven out of Afghanistan in 2001. They have no base in Afghanistan. The war against terrorism is not in Afghan villages and is not in the Afghan countryside", he was stating an unpleasant truth that was glossed over by US policymakers. From this perspective, that Karzai's redline appears to be the entry of US troops into Afghan homes is hardly a coincidence. --- In the end, Karzai will likely back down and sign the BSA. Unfortunately for the Afghan people, while the BSA – and the presence of US troops – may prevent immediately dire consequences, there is little reason for optimism that the country's 30+ years of civil war will end any time soon. So while Hamid Karzai might be a mercurial and paranoid leader who has made a bad situation vis-à-vis the United States that much worse, America's leaders would be wise to look at themselves in the mirror when casting blame. There's plenty to go around. - More, Michael Cohen - Guardian