Afghan President Hamid Karzai chats with U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton Tuesday, during the Afghan leader's four-day visit to the United States.MANDEL NGAN/AFP / Getty Images
President Hamid Karzai has been recast as a valued and trusted partner only weeks after U.S. President Barack Obama seemed to treat the Afghan leader as an unreliable, even unsavoury ally.
Now Washington is rolling out the red carpet for the Afghan leader's four-day visit, sweeping recent spats under the rug with a welcome that would have delighted Israel's prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who got the cold shoulder during a recent visit.
Mr. Karzai, who didn't rate even a joint news conference when Mr. Obama flew in to Kabul in March with a no-nonsense message to the Afghan leader to crack down on corruption, is now being feted and wooed.
The abrupt about-face reflects the grim reality that whatever the president and the Pentagon think of Mr. Karzai, there is no immediate alternative to the Afghan president as the summer fighting season is set to begin.
"It is a special pleasure to host you and your distinguished delegation in Washington, for what is truly an historic gathering this week," Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said yesterday as the visit began.
Last night the Afghan leader and his entourage of more than a dozen ministers dined with Vice-President Joe Biden. Today the leader often derided as the "mayor of Kabul" - a scathing reference to the scant sway his government holds over most of Afghanistan - will lunch with Mr. Obama.
With a major offensive looming in Kandahar, led by some of the thousands of U.S. troops the president has ordered to Afghanistan to drive back the resurgent Taliban, the Obama administration has apparently decided that it cannot remain at odds with Mr. Karzai, who used to chat weekly by video-link with former president George W. Bush. Those ended when Mr. Obama moved into the Oval Office, even as the new president made the Afghan war his priority and nearly tripled the number of American troops on the ground, roughly matching Soviet levels in the 1980s.
"We have a job to do with a partner in the government and the country of Afghanistan," White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said.
But finding nice things to say about progress in Afghanistan, where corruption is rife, opium is the mainstay of the economy and the Taliban have made gains in every region, is hard slogging.
Ms. Clinton - watched by a beaming Mr. Karzai in his distinctive robes and hat yesterday - found a rare glimmer of progress.
"If we are searching for a model of how to meet tough international challenges with skill, dedication and teamwork, we need only look to the Afghan national cricket team," she said.
The charm offensive will continue with Mr. Karzai and his party spending much of today at the White House - far longer than the usual 90-minute working session followed, sometimes, by a joint appearance for the most favoured allies.
That's a significant change from six weeks ago when Mr. Karzai, apparently enraged by the dressing down delivered by Mr. Obama who flew to Kabul in darkness and left less than six hours later, threatened to quit and join the Taliban.
He also accused foreigners of orchestrating the vote-rigging that tainted his re-election last year.
The Obama administration voiced frustration but in Ottawa, Prime Minister Stephen Harper was far more vehement, saying Mr. Karzai's outburst was "completely unacceptable to Canada.''
In Washington, pragmatism may have dictated Mr. Karzai's renaissance as a valued partner but some critics are suggesting Mr. Obama may regret abandoning his short-lived insistence that the Afghan leader clean up his regime.
"For too long the excuse from both Kabul and Washington has been that shaking out warlordism and corruption would be destabilizing," said Rachel Reid, of Human Rights Watch. "A government that protects drug cartels and notorious human rights abusers is keeping Afghanistan trapped in a spiral of insecurity and instability."
Mr. Obama has also vaguely pledged to start pulling combat troops out of Afghanistan next year, even as he pledges not to abandon the decades-long project to create a civil society in the war-ravaged and impoverished state.