Coming Up Next...................

It's wretched enough that our "friend" Ahmed Chalabi has become Iran's point man in Iraq. Now "our man in Kabul," President Hamid Karzai, is quietly shifting his loyalty to Tehran.
Beyond Iranian President Mahmud Ahmedinejad's recent chummy visit to Karzai -- reported by the media but downplayed by Washington -- Iran's been training Taliban forces to kill our troops more efficiently.
Karzai's people despise him; his allies distrust him; his enemies mock him. And our troops keep him in power. Does that sound like a formula for success?
Pakistan's in on Afghanistan's new deal, too, along with Islamabad's favored Mujaheddin terrorist faction, Gulbuddin Hekmatyar's Hezb-i-Islami (as I predicted in The Post last month). Our government's even welcoming Karzai's negotiations.
Scamming Americans is one thing, playing Iranians or Pakistanis another. We send sniffy diplomatic notes. They send assassins.
Also noted in previous columns, Pakistan's making a grand show of helping us by busting senior Taliban and al Qaeda officials (which they could have done years ago). Islamabad's not doing it out of solidarity with Uncle Sam, but because it needs to weaken Taliban elements and leaders it can't control in order to close the hoped-for Afghan deal.
Coming perhaps as early as this year (certainly within the next few years), the Karzai Compromise will at first look like this:
* Karzai remains the titular head of the Kabul regime.
* Iran "owns" western Afghanistan.
* Pakistan replaces the United States as the Kabul government's security guarantor.
* NATO grabs the excuse of "national reconciliation" to dash for home.
* The United States won't be far behind NATO, although we'll continue to pour in aid to "avoid destabilizing the situation."
This being the Greater Middle East, the deal won't last. Karzai holds too weak a hand; national ambitions are in conflict; the hatreds go too deep. Here's what will come next:
* The Iranians and Pakistanis will struggle for influence. The next phase of the endless Afghan civil war will be a proxy fight between Tehran and Islamabad (alongside the internal factional warfare).
* Al Qaeda will align with Pakistan, gaining clandestine sponsorship.
* Karzai will be replaced by a tougher ruler backed by Pakistan, while the Iranian side elevates its own contender for power based in Herat.
* India will side with Iran. China will support Pakistan.
* Pakistan will find itself unable to control its Afghan proxies, after all. Another military regime will take power in Islamabad, as Pakistan finds itself bogged down in an Afghan morass and violence spreads at home.
* The Taliban will fight everybody and outlast everybody.
As our troops surge slowly into Afghanistan to save the inept Karzai government, they may already be irrelevant. We're no longer in on the deal. Everybody knows it but us.
Ralph Peters' new book is "Endless War: Middle Eastern Islam vs. Western Civilization."