Galbraith and Holbrooke belong to the category of American officials who run around thinking that they know what is best for South Asia and the Middle East. Actually, Holbrooke draws his fame from the Dayton Accord that was concluded under his leadership during the administration of President Bill Clinton. But he was installed in the American lobbies of power and influence as one of the protégés of Ambassador Averell Harriman way back in days of the U.S. entanglement and “political engineering” in South Vietnam. So, he is an old hand at the United States’ aborted attempts at rebuilding “broken” nations. In his current post, Holbrooke is reported to be regularly feuding with Hamid Karzai. There is no doubt that Karzai is presiding over a highly inept government. But there is nothing new about that. What is different is that he is an Afghan politician whose star is declining since George W. Bush departed the White House.

Peter Galbraith has a similar career of serving as an ambassador in Croatia and East Timor. He fancies himself an expert on Kurdish problems and has presented a decidedly wrong-headed proposal for an independent Kurdistan. He “also came under scrutiny recently for his stake in an oil field in the Kurdish region of Iraq.”

The corrupt nature of the Karzai government has been a very well-known factor. In fact, corruption remains one of the scourges of all South Asian countries. What should be kept in mind is that a process has been installed in Afghanistan to establish democracy, and its uninterrupted evolution is most vital so that it could eradicate corruption, along with numerous other social ills. The Taliban are attempting to overthrow Karzai through murder and mayhem. How can one explain Galbraith’s suggestion or plan for replacing Karzai through an extra-constitutional, if not an outright unconstitutional, process. In fact, the New York Times dispatch on the subject reports the Mr. Kai Eide told Galbraith that his “plan was ‘unconstitutional, it represented interference of the worst sort, and if pursued it would provoke not only a strong international reaction’ but also civil insurrection.”

It appears that Holbrooke and Galbraith have their own preferred candidates who should replace Karzai. It has been reported that unnamed American officials favor Ashraf Ghani, a former Interior Minister, or Ali A. Jalali. Both of them are fine men, but neither of them was a choice of the Afghan people.

Galbraith has an established record of coming up with his hairbrained schemes, as he did in the case of the Kurdish issue by advocating for an independent Kurdistan. Thereby, he demonstrated how little he really understands the history or politics of that area about which he claims expertise.

Afghanistan has a constitutional process in place. If it were to eventually emerge as a stable democracy, it has to fully implement that process uninterruptedly and on a prolonged basis. Hamid Karzai is an elected president. If his election was an outcome of a corrupt process, then that process has to be corrected next time. If he continues to prove himself as an incompetent leader, as he has in the past, a constitutional means has to be found to replace him. His removal should not be carried out on the whims and fancies of a few self-styled “smart” white men who are running around pretending to be experts on that country. In reality, these “experts” are suffering from the age-old ailment of the colonial era when their forbearers used to think that only they know what is good for brown and black people.