Afghanistan Abdullah Karzai

Canada should make a concerted effort to block any attempt by Afghan President Hamid Karzai to strike a backroom peace deal with the Taliban, says Abdullah Abdullah, Afghanistan's main opposition leader.

"The sacrifices you have made here, and all your taxpayers' money. What for? You will have to ask that," Mr. Abdullah said in an interview.

He said Canada would not be trespassing on Afghanistan's sovereignty if it moves to block a "reconciliation" deal that circumvents Afghanistan's parliamentary system. More importantly, he said, Canada is burdened by a duty to its own citizens to see that it does not happen.

"You have more than a right to stay firm in that," Mr. Abdullah said. "Not just for the sake of any Afghan persons or an Afghan movement, but for the sake of the sacrifices you have made here. You are not in the business of betraying your own people. In that sense, it is an obligation."

The former Afghan foreign minister, who was Mr. Karzai's front-running challenger in last year's fraud-plagued presidential election, credited the Canadian-led Electoral Complaints Commission with heading off a fatal rupture in Afghanistan's young democracy last November.

A recount ordered by the commission forced Mr. Karzai to a runoff vote, but Mr. Abdullah declined the rematch, citing entrenched corruption in Afghanistan's elections system.

Mr. Abdullah said that despite the calamitous result, the intervention of the complaints commission and its Canadian chairman, Grant Kippen, saved the day. But he said that Canada cannot give up now, with a complete political collapse looming after Mr. Karzai's attempts to strike a power-sharing bargain with the Taliban.

"Had it not been for the commission's efforts, we would have had no hope," said Mr. Abdullah, who is in the early stages of building a broad-based political party with a focus on political accountability, transparency and fully free elections.

"There was a complaints commission that we could trust. They gave us hope. Without it, this country would have been in turmoil, and I'm not just talking about the Taliban. I'm talking about the whole political scene. It would have been in turmoil."

Unless Mr. Karzai is held democratically accountable as he proceeds with his Taliban reconciliation schemes, a far worse scenario looms.

While Mr. Karzai has been offering peace deals to the Taliban ever since he was first elected in 2004, he has ramped up his entreaties since his close-call re-election last November. The Taliban leadership has repeatedly rebuffed his appeals, but Mr. Karzai has lately won some Western backing for an internationally funded package of buyouts to Taliban fighters.

That plan has been overshadowed, however, by Mr. Karzai's oblique suggestions of outright power-sharing with the Taliban by granting its leaders top government posts and control of government ministries. At an international conference of more than 60 donor countries in London last month, Mr. Karzai further surprised delegates with an announcement that he intends to invite the Taliban to a traditional "jirga," or grand assembly, later this year.

  While this enthusiasm for deal-making has won some support in the war-weary countries that make up the NATOled ISAF coalition, Mr. Karzai's recent moves have set off loud alarms in Afghanistan.

"With whom are we going to negotiate? Who are the decision-makers?" Sabrina Saqib, an outspoken young Afghan MP, said in a separate interview. "The Taliban ... say that they want the foreign forces gone. Is this negotiable? Canada has come to bring us democracy. If you leave, I don't know how many days I will have."

She said an "exit strategy" sell-out to the Taliban would reverse all the gains that Canada and the other 42 members of the International Security Force have made in Afghanistan, Ms. Saqib said.

Canada's Lawrence Cannon was one of the few foreign ministers to express skepticism about Mr. Karzai's reconciliation scheme in London last month. Nevertheless, while Ottawa's long-standing policy of backing "Afghan-led reconciliation efforts" is appreciated by the Afghan people, the policy could be easily subverted, Mr. Abdullah warned. The policy could make Canada complicit in a power-sharing deal that reverses Afghanistan's slow and painful strides toward democracy.

"I know how bureaucracy sometimes works," Mr. Abdullah said. "You go along with something if it suits."

He said Afghanistan's friends around the world should hold Mr. Karzai accountable to democratic principles and not let him get away with turning back the clock. "The government is shifting the whole focus to how we should bring the Taliban back. This is very dangerous.

"If the Taliban will finally break the resolve of the North American public to stay in Afghanistan, they will be back," he continued. "They don't want to be part of the political process. They want to destroy it and replace it with their own.

"All this talk about reconciliation is very tempting for the international community, but this is a charade. Who is talking about fighting corruption? Everybody is talking about reconciliation, and it doesn't have a foundation, it doesn't have a basis. If you pay bribes to people through the same corrupt system, then all you're left with is corruption."