The disintegration of Afghanistan accelerated last week with the assassination of Ahmed Wali Karzai, President Hamid Karzai's powerful half-brother.
The president, who has been portrayed by American officials as "paranoid and depressed," and often high on hashish, climbed into his younger brother's grave at last week's funeral, and wailed.
Karzai has much to wail about. His country faces a series of crises—each debilitating on its own—that together threaten to drag Afghanistan over the brink into chaos.
Political paralysis
Many members of the Afghan Parliament are openly seeking the president's impeachment.
They are enraged by the ruling of a special court, set up by Karzai, demanding that 62 members of Parliament be replaced by their defeated challengers, mostly Karzai allies. The existing Parliament has so far refused to recognize the court's legitimacy.
While the impeachment effort is unlikely to succeed, it is indicative of the paralysis that has gripped the Afghan government in recent years. Karzai has not filled several cabinet positions since his controversial re-election in 2009.
Financial collapse
Afghanistan is on the verge of complete financial collapse.
Its largest financial institution, Kabul Bank, is basically a criminal enterprise, doling out a reported $900 billion in loans to favored friends and cronies of the Karzai government. The loans were not expected to be paid back.
Late last month, two former bank executives were arrested on embezzlement charges, and the governor of Afghanistan's central bank fled to the United States fearing for his life after investigating the abuses at Kabul Bank.
Last week, parliamentarians urged the government to audit a second Afghan financial institution, Azizi Bank, fearing financial improprieties there, as well.
The International Monetary Fund has suspended its programs in Afghanistan, demanding greater oversight of the country's financial system. Afghanistan has thus been deprived of more than $70 million in aid from the World Bank, since such aid is predicated on the existence of an operative IMF program in the country.
Border skirmishes with Pakistan
For several months now, Pakistan has increased its cross-border attacks on militants hiding inside Afghanistan, killing dozens and forcing more than 10,000 Afghan civilians to flee, according to the Afghan government.
While the Afghan military has said it is prepared to respond, the central government has so far demurred.
An Afghan border commander resigned last month to protest the government's refusal to retaliate.
Some suspect Pakistan wants to highlight Afghanistan's inability to protect itself, and thus convince the Karzai government that Afghanistan needs Pakistan to survive—especially after Western troops withdraw in 2014. If Afghanistan does not find a way to deter its neighbors—Pakistan especially, but Iran as well— from meddling in internal Afghan affairs, Afghanistan's "sovereignty will remain a practical fiction," Damood Ahmed wrote recently in Foreign Policy.
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