Two senior Afghan officials were showing President Hamid Karzai the evidence of the spectacular rocket attack on a nationwide peace conference earlier this month whenKarzai told them that he believed the Taliban were not responsible. “The president did not show any interest in the evidence — none — he treated it like a piece of dirt,” said Amrullah Saleh, then the director of the Afghan intelligence service. Saleh declined to discuss Karzai's reasoning in more detail. But a prominent Afghan with knowledge of the meeting, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said that Karzai suggested in the meeting that it might have been the Americans who carried it out. Minutes after the exchange, Saleh and the interior minister, Hanif Atmar, resigned — the most dramatic defection from Karzai's government since he came to power nine years ago. Saleh and Atmar said they quit because Karzai made clear that he no longer considered them loyal. But underlying the tensions, according to Saleh and Afghan and Western officials, was something more profound: That Karzai had lost faith in the Americans and NATO to prevail in Afghanistan. For that reason, Saleh and other officials said, Karzai has been pressing to strike his own deal with the Taliban and the country's archrival, Pakistan. According to a former senior Afghan official, Karzai's maneuverings involve secret negotiations with the Taliban outside the purview of American and NATO officials. “The president has lost his confidence in the capability of either the coalition or his own government to protect this country,” Saleh said in an interview at his home. “President Karzai has never announced that NATO will lose, but the way that he does not proudly own the campaign shows that he doesn't trust it is working.” People close to the president say he began to lose confidence in the Americans last summer, after national elections in which independent monitors determined that nearly one million ballots had been stolen on Karzai's behalf. – NYT The rift worsened in December, when President Obama announced that he intended to begin reducing the number of American troops by the summer of 2011. “Karzai told me that he can't trust the Americans to fix the situation here,” said a Western diplomat in Kabul, who spoke on condition of anonymity. “He believes they stole his legitimacy during the elections last year. And then they said publicly that they were going to leave.” If Karzai's resolve to work closely with the United States and use his own army to fight the Taliban is weakening, that could present a problem for Obama. The American war strategy rests largely on clearing ground held by the Taliban so that Karzai's army and government can move in, allowing the Americans to scale back their involvement in an increasingly unpopular and costly war. Relations with Karzai have been rocky for some time, and international officials have expressed concern in the past that his decision making can be erratic. Last winter, Karzai accused NATO in a speech of ferrying Taliban fighters around northern Afghanistan in helicopters. Earlier this year, following criticism by the Obama administration, Karzai told a group of supporters that he might join the Taliban. American officials tried to patch up their relationship with Karzai during his visit to the White House last month. Indeed, on many issues, like initiating contact with some Taliban leaders and persuading its fighters to change sides, Karzai and the Americans are on the same page. At a news conference at the Presidential Palace this week, Karzai was asked about the Taliban's role in the June 4 attack on the loya jirga and his faith in NATO. He declined to address either one. “Who did it?” Karzai said of the attack. “It's a question that our security organization can bring and prepare the answer.” Asked if he had confidence in NATO, Karzai said he was grateful for the help and said the partnership was “working very, very well.” But he did not answer the question. “We are continuing to work on improvements all around,” Karzai said, speaking in English and appearing next to David Cameron, the British prime minister. A senior NATO official said the resignations of Atmar and Saleh, who had strong support from the NATO allies, were “extremely disruptive.” The official said of Mr. Karzai, “My concern is, is he capable of being a wartime leader?”
