Sanskrit Hardball
Mr. Prodi, I have your tiny testicles in my fist…
The man shown above, Mr. Hamid Karzai, the President of Afghanistan, is – and this is quite an extraordinary accomplishment – still alive after 29 months in office. The snap below on the left shows instead Italian Prime Minister Romano Prodi, having a little trouble on the campaign trail. He has been the leader of his own country for a little less than a year, and is politically more dead than alive.
We have spoken – (here) – with some outrage of the idiotic deal cut by the Italian Government to buy back an Italian hostage from a Taleban warlord. We won’t go back over that now, except to say that it involved persuading the Afghan Government to release an uncertain number of very senior, very throat-cutting Talebani officers – and to mention that everybody in the entire world with the exception of Romano Prodi and a few of his Ministers thought this was a monumentally bad idea.
In case there was any doubt about the matter, after the release of the Italian – a correspondent of the Rome daily “La Repubblica,” Daniele Mastrogiacomo – the journalist’s captors then went ahead and murdered his interpreter when nobody seemed willing to purchase him as well, and for a discount price of just two more Talebani. They had already cut Mastrogiacomo’s driver’s head off by way of getting the ball rolling.
Mr. Prodi and his Government initially denied that they had had anything to with the negotiations for the journalist’s release.
They said the whole thing had been handled by a private citizen, Mr. Gino Strada, the head of an Italian NGO active in Afghanistan called “Emergency.” Mr. Strada pointed out that he had been explicitly asked by the Italian Government to serve as an intermediary with precise authority to arrange Mastrogiacomo’s purchase and that he had acted in continuous concert with Rome.
Well, maybe, the Italian Government admitted, hanging out Mr. Strada and his organization to twist in the wind. But, and this was the official version, that didn’t mean Rome had anything to do with the release of all those Taleban officers. That was the free choice of Mr. Karzai and Italy knew nothing about it.
Bullshit, Mr. Karzai replied – we are paraphrasing only slightly – they leaned on me heavily and continuously. Prodi, Karzai said, personally called to tell me that if we didn’t let our prisoners go, securing the release of the hostage, his government would probably fall and he would not be able to guarantee the continued presence of the Italian contingent in Afghanistan.
Any political leader in his right mind would probably attempt mightily at this point to let the entire question die slowly away. Not Romano Prodi. He has now given a radio interview in which he denies ever having spoken with Karzai about withdrawing Italian troops from the country. “Everything Karzai did,” Prodi insists, “he did knowing he was doing a favor for a country that is helping him.”
(As an aside, Prodi, who never knows when enough is already more than enough, then added gratuitously: “It was my absolute duty to save his (Mastrogiacomo’s) life. I would have negotiated even if there had been a law against it” – suggesting that whatever guarantees Italy now offers its allies on this subject will be of limited value.)
It is possible Mr. Prodi believes technologies like tape recorders have not yet penetrated so far as distant Afghanistan, or thinks that the extremely wily Hamid Karzai is not clever enough to know how to operate one. However that is, Mr. Prodi’s credibility on the issue is near to zero after the string of, ah, mis-statements he has already made about the whole affair. Karzai instead, while he hardly appear to be a Prince of Light, had to have a very good reason to release his Talebani – and now we may know what that was.
We figure Hamid Karzai is about getting ready to see the Italian Ambassador on some matter or other, routine stuff no doubt. We picture him toying idly with a tape casette while he discusses, oh, a project for training Afghani coffee bar operators to make cappuccini or enlarging the market for handwoven Afghan carpets in Italy.
We picture the Italian plenipotentiary attempting to decide how to report to Rome without placing his own head in a political noose. No request for instructions, that would mean… er, how about, ahm, let’s see: “In the course of our conversation Mr. Karzai appeared to wish to draw attention to a tape casette he held in his hand. He offered no explanation for the gesture.”
Mr. Karzai might even think of handing out a transcript, just for fun, rather the way the Talebani cut off heads. He might believe that in Romano Prodi he didn’t have a very reliable guarantee of Italian support anyway. He might even have other, more dependable allies who do not admire Prodi. And it is sometimes good to let people see that you are not a doormat, especially for fools.
This all could come down to the ancient wisdom in the Bhagavad Gita which Krishna, on the battlefied of Kurukshetra, imparts to Arjuna: “Don’t get mad, get even.” Actually, he says “Behold My mystic opulence” and blesses Arjuna with an awe-inspiring glimpse of His divine absolute form, but it amounts to the same thing…