U.S. envoy has been there, but will it help?

The American envoy’s armed convoy rumbled through the dusty streets of Kabul, stopping at one polling place, then another, as Afghans voted in their first contested presidential election.

In the August heat, Richard C. Holbrooke watched the balloting, his satisfaction tinged with concern. Widespread violence had been averted. But the integrity of the election, so vital to American plans, had yet to be proved.

Mingling with people and sampling pastry sold by some children on a corner, Holbrooke said the process appeared “peaceful and orderly,” but warned as he squinted at one of the complicated punch cards that “the test comes when people count the ballots.”

The veteran U.S. diplomat would soon learn how true his words were. The next day, at a crisis meeting of U.S. officials monitoring the election, he was told that Afghan President Hamid Karzai’s staff had begun to claim victory, and that his opponents were charging fraud.

The moment provided the first inkling of a devastating realization: Afghanistan’s election had been racked by corruption. The credibility of the vote was undermined and, along with it, many of the Obama administration’s plans for the country.

American officials have grudgingly come to accept the apparent inevitability of Karzai’s reelection. But with international confidence in the Afghan president shattered and extremist violence rising, President Obama has undertaken a review of U.S. strategy in the region. On Wednesday, he conferred with members of his national security team -- Holbrooke included -- on how to best counter the security threat emanating from Islamist insurgencies in Afghanistan and neighboring Pakistan.

As Obama’s special representative, Holbrooke has struggled for almost nine months to forge a policy that would stabilize the two fragile states. He has been a leading advocate of a “go big” policy in Afghanistan. He pushed for an ambitious U.S. military presence, an intensive effort to train Afghan troops, and a drive to root out government corruption and spur economic development.

The aim was to persuade Afghans to turn their backs on insurgents and embrace their own government.

All that rode on a fair presidential election producing an outcome most Afghans and the international community could accept. With the election now stained by fraud, the question is whether the policy of deep U.S. engagement advocated by Holbrooke can still be implemented.

The question presents a late career challenge for a diplomat whose chief asset is a reputation, towering even against Washington’s power peaks, for getting what he wants from foreign leaders and bureaucratic rivals. Holbrooke, 68, began his foreign service career in the Mekong Delta during the Vietnam War and has held senior posts under every Democratic president since Jimmy Carter, resorting to everything in his diplomatic tool kit: from argument to flattery, from threats to his legendary persistence.

These talents contributed to his perhaps most famous triumph: helping end the war in Bosnia, where his hard-charging style earned him such nicknames as “Raging Bull.”

He was recruited for the job in the Obama administration by his longtime ally, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, whom he advised during the 2008 presidential primary campaign. His closeness to Clinton had led to friction between Holbrooke and some Obama foreign policy advisors in the course of the contest, and there were questions about whether he would be too freewheeling for the team-minded, drama-averse Obama administration.

Holbrooke has refused to be drawn into a public position in the current debate roiling the administration, but his views on Afghanistan and Pakistan have been articulated for years. In a monthly column written for the Washington Post during the Democrats’ years in the wilderness, he argued that stabilizing Afghanistan was a big job that deserved generous U.S. resources.

Administration officials say Holbrooke’s views dominated the early inter-agency meetings on the region. Obama’s advisors were keen to avoid references to “nation building,” a term likely to alarm Americans who recall failed efforts to make other countries more like the United States.

But Holbrooke’s approach to Afghanistan amounted to just that: expansive programs to improve the economy, public welfare and government institutions, along with huge dollops of U.S. aid.

Holbrooke values the influence that U.S. aid provides, said one American who has worked closely with him in Kabul.

“He’s a leverage man,” said the American. “His whole being is dedicated to finding leverage over specific actors and using it to get what he wants.”

Holbrooke set out at a frantic pace to turn the Bush administration’s approach to the region inside out. Where Bush praised and encouraged Karzai, Holbrooke browbeat him, complaining about government corruption and ineffectiveness.

In Kabul, the capital, stories of Holbrooke’s clashes with Karzai are legendary, including one in which the Afghan is said to have thrown his lamb’s wool hat at the American.

Similarly, while the Bush team limited its contacts in Pakistan, Holbrooke began reaching out to all corners of its labyrinthine political landscape, including Islamists with suspected extremist ties.

In the process, he has become a regular presence in Kabul and Islamabad, putting his 6-foot-2, barrel-chested frame through the 18-hour flights to the region six times this year on an Air National Guard jet, which he roams, sometimes in beige pajamas. In spare moments on the plane he watches movies, seeming to prefer films produced for teens. He claims “Dumb and Dumber” as his all-time favorite.

He is shadowed by a staff that includes well-known experts, such as Vali R. Nasr, an advisor on Pakistan, and Barnett R. Rubin, a specialist on Afghanistan, but sometimes also by a cloud of reporters. Having been editor of Foreign Policy magazine, a columnist, a ghostwriter and an author, Holbrooke cultivates reporters energetically. He seems happy to be the Obama team’s press officer, flattering reporters for stories he likes and scolding them for lapses.

In Kabul, a British reporter asked at a polling station whether, in the complicated region, Holbrooke could still be the swashbuckling “Holbrooke of the Balkans,” a sort of latter-day Lawrence of Arabia.

“There was no ‘Holbrooke of the Balkans,’ ” the diplomat corrected. “There was only Holbrooke in the Balkans.”

Relations with foreign leaders are not always so friendly.

Karzai is convinced that Holbrooke wants to undermine him, and views him as “the devil,” said one American diplomat. (In fact, Karzai has been receiving much the same message from other U.S. officials; he also considers Vice President Joe Biden an enemy, officials say.)

However, experts debate whether the Obama administration has skillfully handled Karzai, who may remain in office for five more years.

One former U.S. diplomat who has worked with Karzai contended that the American pressure has backfired, convincing the conspiracy-minded Karzai that the Americans were out to dump him, and that he needed to turn to his only other substantial source of political support -- the warlords Washington despises.

“We’ve pushed him exactly where we didn’t want him,” said this diplomat, who declined to be quoted because he is no longer involved with the issue.

Another recent confrontation involved the United Nations office in Kabul, where Holbrooke this year wanted to install a close associate, Peter W. Galbraith, as the No. 2 official.

Kai Eide, the senior U.N. representative in Kabul, fought Holbrooke on the issue, apparently fearing that Galbraith’s presence would give the Americans too much leverage.

Galbraith and Eide clashed bitterly last month, with the American charging that the U.N. was concealing evidence of election fraud. He was fired from his post last week.

Eide, a Norwegian, has acknowledged the collision with Holbrooke and explained that both he and the American have “short fuses.”

Since the election, Holbrooke has avoided public comment on the fraud charges. However, Galbraith said that up to 30% of Karzai’s votes were fraudulent. If true, it would wipe out Karzai’s victory margin, potentially forcing a runoff.

An electoral complaints commission, most of whose members were appointed by the United Nations, has ordered a recount of ballot boxes it deemed suspicious, about 12% of the total. To speed the process, officials are sampling 10% of those boxes.

Aside from the overall strategy, Holbrooke’s efforts are widely credited with revitalizing what had been a neglected U.S. effort in the country.

“They’ve done a good job of putting this process on steroids,” said J. Alexander Thier of the U.S. Institute of Peace, a federally funded research organization created by Congress. “They’ve brought in a lot of very serious, very intense people who have their reputations staked on this effort, and have given it a lot more juice.”

Ultimately, however, the larger success of his efforts will be judged by whether the strategy selected by the Obama administration succeeds where every previous approach has failed.

Holbrooke has insisted that Afghanistan and Pakistan are his last diplomatic mission. Even given his age, many who know him have a hard time believing it.

Either way, Morton Abramowitz, a former senior State Department official who has known Holbrooke since 1969, says the job is the toughest foreign policy assignment for the administration, including Arab-Israeli peacemaking.

“This is infinitely harder than what he did in the Balkans,” Abramowitz said.

--

paul.richter@latimes.com