Karzai wants more control

Provincial Reconstruction Teams have been active in Afghanistan since 2002, working in remote areas of the country to develop infrastructure and build medical facilities and schools for Afghans who have never known such things. In 2008 I traveled with one PRT in the Panjshir province to villages that had never seen Westerners high up in the Hindu Kush.

They were doing good work, but the lack of security in many places put that work in jeapordy. Taliban forces would often end up gleaning the benefit from millions of U.S. taxpayer dollars. And while the work might have built goodwill among the locals, that goodwil was often directed more toward the United States, not the Afghan government.

Last year, General Petraeus shifted the strategy somewhat to try and put more of an Afghan face on the things that are going right in that country, with an eye toward the fact that the U.S. will eventually leave.

Now President Hamid Karzai is calling for the PRTs to pack up and head out. It's not that he doesn't want the benefits they provide, he just wants to control the massive amounts of cash to which the PRTs have access. Unfortunately, Karzai's track record for corruption makes U.S. commanders skeptical, to say the least.

Consider last month's revelation that the Karzai administration has been trying to tax U.S. aid to his country - to skim a little off the top, so to speak. This is illegal under U.S. law, and has been largely ignored by the contractors who have received the tax bills. But it speaks to Karzai's desire to exert more control over the purse strings. Only nobody trusts him with the money.

Corruption is still rampant in the Afghan government, and that won't change anytime soon. To make matters worse, the aid we provide often ends up having the opposite of its intended effect - such as the fact that the irrigation canals dug by USAID in the 1940s are a large part of what enables Afghanistan to grow the poppies that make it the world's largest producer of heroin. Oops.

Despite all this, our men and women in uniform are continuing to make progress, and the coming spring "fighting season" will be crucial in tipping the scales in favor of victory in the shadow of the Hindu Kush.

One thing is for sure, however, our troops will not be leaving come July, as originally announced by their commander in chief. In fact, negotiations are reportedly underway for permanent U.S. bases in Afghanistan, something commanders there have been counting on for years.