Afghanistan: Westerners misjudged Hamid Karzai: Gen Allen --- KABUL: Former Commander of the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) and US troops in Afghanistan said the European leaders had misunderstood the Afghan president by assuming that Hamid Karzai is inherently a “Westphalian President”. -- Addressing a public discussion titled “The Legacy of President Hamid Karzai” at the United States Institute of Peace on Friday, Gen. John Allen, said: “He knew us far better than we understood him and the ancient culture of the Pashtons and the other tribes and the ethnicities of Afghanistan and in this we were at a distinct disadvantage, we were put differently, he was at a distinct advantage in his leadership, and I often told people you can make a fundamental error and your relationship with President Karzai by assuming that he is inherently a Westphalian President in the context of a European leader, he is in fact a tribal leader, he is in fact of the elite of the tribes.” --- The discussion was also joined by the former UN Special Representative to Afghanistan, Kai Eide, and Afghan journalist and author of “After Karzai”, Mujib Mashal. --- The retired US general further said, “As Kai properly said, many of those hard-wired paradigms were the first lenses through he would view the challenges that we faced and the crises that we ultimately have to solve and none of that wrong, it shouldn’t be alarming and it shouldn’t be surprising, it came from the inherent responsibility that we all had to understand the environment which we were operating as military professionals and to ultimately understand the inherent nature of this leader with whom we deal, he always was happiest when he was relating the details of Afghan history not just as an afghan nationalist but as a patriot in that regard, and sometimes he would seemingly be rumbling from one topic to another and I would sit there wondering where all this is going but invariably he bring it all back to the point and he would tie it altogether very skillfully to address whatever issue or crisis we faced and with that he used the very clear vehicle of afghan history to make the imperative or the point that we needed to solve the problems we are facing today, he very well understands Afghanistan and the ethnicities, he was enormously frustrated with the US over its policy towards Pakistan, he was convinced that we were fighting a war in the wrong place.” -- Regarding his first meeting with the Afghan president, the ex-US military general said: “I had my first meeting with President Karzai, I spent so much time worrying about the meeting…. ….the meeting turned up to be a friendly meeting and an opportunity to make it a friendship, I pledged him my support and my full energy and our partnership for future, but not surprisingly afterwards I was amused and a bit alarmed at the Palace press release of our first meeting, the many things that I had conceded to him in a meeting which I had done, probably took a couple of days for me, but nonetheless we were able to get some work done, I sought to make this relationship something more than casual, productive and a friendship, because he is really a very charming, charismatic individual and is extraordinarily well-read.” - AT Monitoring Desk, http://www.afghanistantimes.af/news