WHAT President Obama apparently said to President Karsai of Afghanistan in private during their brief meeting last weekend was apparently spelt out in public yesterday by Admiral Mullen, the Chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff. Arriving in Kabul on a visit of his own, Admiral Mullen said: We will be unable to succeed in Kandahar if we cannot eliminate a vast majority of corruption there. If we can't do it there, then we will not be able to succeed...That's a fact. The brutal frankness of that statement can be better understood when it is remembered that a large scale attack on Kandahar is currently being planned. Designed to remove the Taliban from the area it is being spoken of as the most important engagement in eight years of fighting in Afghanistan. Yet the senior officer in the United States says that a military victory will be pointless unless it is accompanied by the elimination of corruption in the province ruled, as it happens, by President Karsai's half-brother, Ahmed Wali Larzai.
Once again, and despite President Obama's long-pondered new strategy for Afghanistan, there are mixed signals from the various centres of authority and influence among the Western representation, military and civilian, there.
It cannot be easy for soldiers waiting to go into battle in Kandahar to hear Admiral Mullen say their efforts will be worthless unless corruption is rooted out.
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