Informed Comment Homepage

Thoughts on the Middle East, History and Religion

Header Right

Donate

  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • Google+
  • Email
  • RSS
  • Featured
  • US politics
  • Middle East
  • Environment
  • US Foreign Policy
  • Energy
  • Economy
  • Politics
  • About
  • Archives
  • Submissions

© 2023 Informed Comment

  • Skip to content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
Afghanistan

Bad “Weather” between Obama and Karzai Forestalls Meeting

Juan Cole 12/03/2010

Tweet
Share
Reddit
Email
0 Shares

Update: President Obama made a surprise trip to Afghanistan on Friday but is said to have gotten stuck on Bagram Base and could not meet face to face with Hamid Karzai.

The press is saying that Obama cannot get to Kabul because of high winds and fog, making it impossible to fly helicopters to the capital.

But CNN is saying that police in Kabul are saying that “the weather is fine.”

But Bagram is a short automobile ride away from Kabul, and what this snafu tells you is that the US does not even control the area between Bagram and Kabul sufficiently to risk putting the president in an armored vehicle to go overland.

Or, maybe there was a behind the scenes tiff that made a face to face meeting diplomatically impossible (see the next entry). This interpretation is given credence by the cancellation even of a teleconference between Obama and Karzai.

I don’t think this is going well.

Filed Under: Afghanistan, Uncategorized

About the Author

Juan Cole is the founder and chief editor of Informed Comment. He is Richard P. Mitchell Professor of History at the University of Michigan He is author of, among many other books, Muhammad: Prophet of Peace amid the Clash of Empires and The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam. Follow him on Twitter at @jricole or the Informed Comment Facebook Page

Primary Sidebar

STAY INFORMED

Join our newsletter and have sharp analysis delivered to your inbox every day.

Twitter

Follow Juan Cole @jricole or Informed Comment @infcomment on Twitter

Facebook



Sign up for our newsletter

Informed Comment © 2023 All Rights Reserved

Posting....