The day the Taliban swept into Kabul, former president Hamid Karzai, who had spent much of the past two decades atop a government that was now in the midst of collapsing, called Abdullah Abdullah, another veteran survivor of Afghanistan’s game of thrones.
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Karzai, who lives in a compound near the grounds of the presidential palace, had bombshell news: President Ashraf Ghani had just fled the country. And he had a question for a man who once had been his chief rival: Would Abdullah stay or go?
“He asked me two or three times,” Abdullah recalled. “We were back and forth on the telephone. And then he [asked] if the two of us could be together. I said, ‘That’s a good idea.’ ”
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The two men stayed in Kabul after the Taliban seized power, formed a new council, and have pressed their former enemies to build a government that includes a wide swath of the Afghan ethnic and political scene, including women. This was not without risk. The last time the Taliban ousted a government, in 1996, they tortured the president, Mohammad Najibullah, killed him and hung his body from a traffic light post.
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Karzai’s reemergence is the latest twist in a remarkably durable political career, especially for a man widely considered a puppet of the Americans when he was spirited into Afghanistan by U.S. forces and installed in a frigid presidential palace in the winter of 2001. Karzai went on to win two democratic elections and stayed in power for nearly 13 years as the Taliban regrouped from defeat to become a formidable insurgent army. Along the way, he became a thorn in the side of the American government, publicly berating Washington over Afghan civilian casualties in the U.S. war against the Taliban and doing little to fight the corruption that riddled his administration. He so frustrated then-Sen. Joe Biden during a famously acrimonious dinner that Biden threw down his napkin and stormed out.
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But Karzai’s attempt to persuade the Taliban to moderate its views and include rivals in a new government may be his longest shot yet. After initial meetings with Taliban representatives last month, there has been little communication between the two sides and nothing approaching a formal or substantive negotiation, according to people familiar with the situation. The Taliban has yet to formally announce who will hold top-level positions in its government, but early reports suggest it will not include former officials.
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“Our meetings so far have been informal, more about exchanges of opinions, acquaintances,” said Omar Zakhilwal, a former finance minister who met with Taliban leaders along with Karzai and Abdullah late last month.
The more pressing talks happening now are between different factions “within the Taliban,” Zakhilwal said in an email. “I am positive that these internal talks of the Taliban leaders include discussions on the future government, its structure, etc., but none of us are much in the loop about them or have much information yet.”
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Their freedom of movement has also been constrained. For 12 days, starting the night the Taliban descended on Kabul, Karzai lived at Abdullah’s residence, with Taliban guards posted outside, according to Abdullah, the former chief executive of the Afghan government under Ghani. Karzai has since returned home. Abdullah said he has not left his own house since Aug. 15, the day Kabul fell. Amid the tension and uncertainty, the two men are in touch several times a day.
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“Thousands of members of [ISIS] have been released from the prisons,” Abdullah said. “Among them there were some leaders, very senior figures. That’s the type of security environment we are talking about.”
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When Karzai and Abdullah met with Taliban leaders last month, they were told that because different militant groups had entered the capital, “it would be advisable if we do not move so much around,” Abdullah said.
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A spokesman for Karzai said he was not available for comment.
“I’m not sure if it’s a kind of house arrest, but it shows the space for them is really shrinking,” said Ali Adili, a researcher with the Afghanistan Analysts Network.
Some analysts and former officials think it is unlikely that Karzai and Abdullah will join the new government in positions of authority, adding that the two could have an advisory role with the next government. Some involved in the effort are pessimistic that the Taliban has any intention of being inclusive beyond token appointments. Taliban officials have said that women may not be allowed to hold cabinet posts.
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The insurgent group is expected to name its top religious figure, Sheikh Haibatullah Akhundzada, as the supreme leader of Afghanistan; and other commanders, such as Abdul Ghani Baradar, who spent eight years in a Pakistani prison, are likely to play a prominent role in government.
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The movement has yet to announce its cabinet, choose a national flag and anthem, or decide what the government will be called — an Islamic emirate or something else. Across the capital, government ministries are not functioning.
These were all challenges that Karzai faced in 2001 when military and CIA officers escorted him into the Arg, the presidential palace in downtown Kabul designed by British architects in the 19th century. At the time, the grounds were overgrown and traversed by feral dogs; the power was often out, the plumbing in disrepair, and the president’s office sometimes smelled of sewage.
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From that inauspicious start, the interim Afghan government took shape, funded by billions of dollars from the United States and protected by American and NATO troops. Karzai won his first election in 2004 as the Bush administration’s favored candidate; then again in 2009 when he had fallen out of favor with the Obama administration, which was sending tens of thousands of additional troops to fight the resurgent Taliban. In that election, Karzai narrowly defeated Abdullah in a vote marred by rampant fraud.
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Karzai’s final term was marked by mutual distrust and suspicion with the U.S. government. He excoriated the Americans over repeated airstrikes that killed Afghan civilians and publicly sympathized with the Taliban, which he referred to as “disgruntled brothers.” Karzai complained that the United States was an obstacle to peace talks, although he also opposed the U.S. negotiations with insurgents that excluded the Afghan government.
Obama administration officials found Karzai an exasperating and unreliable partner whose government failed to provide effective services to its people and who tolerated widespread corruption among the Afghan elite, including his brothers.
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Over the years, Western diplomats had offered him lucrative positions abroad if he stepped away from the political scene, but Karzai never wanted to leave. After his presidency, he moved into a house near the palace and remained active in Afghan politics. In recent years, he has traveled to China, Russia, India and elsewhere to try to help end the war.
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Some former aides saw it also as an attempt to cultivate new foreign allies with the United States on its way out of Afghanistan.
“We started nicknaming him ‘Karzai-ovsky’ because he got so close to Moscow,” said one former senior official in Karzai’s government, speaking on the condition of anonymity.
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Karzai’s longevity is in some ways a common theme in Afghan politics. Over more than four decades of conflict, warlords go dormant, then emerge years later in official positions. Insurgents become ministers and back again.
One of Karzai’s colleagues on the newly formed “coordinating council,” Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, was one of the CIA’s leading clients in the war against the Soviets in the 1980s. He morphed into a top insurgent in the two-decade battle against the United States and now seeks compromise with the Taliban. The man now calling himself Afghanistan’s caretaker president, Amrullah Saleh, was an aide to legendary resistance fighter Ahmed Shah Massoud during the Soviet occupation before becoming the country’s spy chief and vice president. Saleh retreated to the Panjshir Valley in the Hindu Kush mountains last month to help lead the armed resistance to the Taliban.
“The Panjshir headquartered resistance isn’t for Panjshir but for the whole country,” Saleh tweeted earlier this week. “The Afghan national flag is in full mast & hoisted in govt buildings.”
Karzai has chosen a more diplomatic path. He had been active in recent dialogue with the Taliban, and he and Abdullah had been scheduled to fly to Doha, Qatar, to negotiate the transition of power when Ghani suddenly fled the country.
After the Taliban moved on Kabul, Karzai put out a video, filmed in Abdullah’s garden, accompanied by his three young daughters, calling on the Taliban to protect the Afghans and saying he would stay to work for a peaceful transition. He has also met with women’s rights leaders and others in recent days.
Taliban leaders have been gathering in Kandahar and are expected to announce their government soon.
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“I think the main decisions have been made, and they may just tell [Karzai and others], ‘This is what we’re doing,’ ” said Saad Mohseni, director general of Moby Media Group, which owns the news channel Tolo TV, and who has been in touch with Karzai. “I think we’ve got to remain fairly realistic that this is a victorious army; it doesn’t have to consult with anyone.”
A Taliban spokesman did not respond to a request for comment.
Some analysts say that Karzai and Abdullah might be useful to the Taliban in an attempt to co-opt various political factions and defuse further hostilities. But few predict they will have much influence in whatever Taliban government emerges.
“If people like Karzai and Abdullah stay,” said the former Afghan official, “they’re always going to be on a tight leash.”