The Case for Karzai as Most Fascinating Person of 2009
Barbara Walters’ most fascinating people of 2009 list this year is made up of the likes of Lady GaGa, Adam Lambert, Sarah Palin, and the children of the late great Michael Jackson.
Walters will apparently reveal the most fascinating person of the year when the special airs on December 09 on ABC. Though interesting and attention-grabbing, none of these people, with the exception of the children of the King of Pop are really fascinating. Lady GaGa, Adam Lambert and Kate Gosselin (yes, she’s on the list) may have set records and made headlines this year, but fascinating they are not.
The actual most fascinating person of 2009 was without a doubt the man at the center of some of the biggest political debates of the last ten years. A man upon whose shoulders so much hope and trust was placed in 2001, but has ultimately left his people and the outside world questioning his leadership ability, his decision-making skills, and his vision for his nation.
Hamid Karzai began 2009 having just presented then United States President George W. Bush with the Ghazi Amanullah Khan Medal for service to Afghanistan a month earlier. In retrospect, there could have been no better way for Karzai to end 2008 and ring in a year where he himself was repeatedly accused of election fraud, consistently challenged the Obama Administration after years of public silence towards the flawed policies of George W. Bush, and signed into law Acts that systematically robbed Afghan women of what little rights they had regained in the post-Taliban era.
The man that the New York Times magazine says has trapped himself in a labyrinth of twisted relationships and that his former finance minister Dr. Ashraf Ghani compared to King Lear has proven to be nothing if not fascinating.
Despite being a public figure, Karzai is still a mystery both to his own people and the rest of the world. No one is quite sure of his intentions for his nation and everyone has shown great doubt in his ability to govern a nation that has been steeped in thirty years of war and poverty.
Of course, aside from the controversy and poor wording that has plagued Karzai for much of the last year, he also had to deal with Obama’s constant back and forth internal debates regarding a troop surge in Afghanistan. Karzai also had to dust off his robe and accept the Presidency of Afghanistan after accusations of rampant fraud and questions of legitimacy circled around him.
Yet, despite all of this, we know very little about the man and his motivation. His Presidency has come to be seen as a definitive example of being between Scylla and Charybdis despite hailing from a completely landlocked nation. Even when he trips over himself politically, Karzai still remains guarded and save for a few occasions, utterly stoic. He states over and over again that not only does he know what’s best for Afghanistan, but that is all that he aims for. Yet, we still have little indication of what he considers to be good for his nation.
In a year that saw Hope and Change brought to America in the form of a Politician while dreams of a similar fate for Afghanistan were quickly dashed as a result of a fraudulent election, who could be more fascinating than a world leader who is at the center of much of the international debate and yet reveals almost nothing about himself politically or personally?