The women wearing badges and blue headscarves split their glance between each other and two bottles on the counter.
"It's water," I tell them. They pause, then order me to drink from both bottles to prove there is nothing dodgy about them. And they pause again, waiting to see if I keel over.
That I am still standing seems the cue for a forensic bag search. They analyze a crumpled tissue, flip through every page of a book, and after hushed discussion confiscate an offending article: lipstick.
At this point I am 118 minutes into the security check for a news conference with Hamid Karzai, the day after he was declared president for a second term by way of a tainted election. Half a dozen hurdles and two sniffer dogs have already stripped journalists of mobile phones, pens, lozenges, watches, hand sanitizer, perfume, and anything deemed too threatening to be in same room as the president.
The layers of security at the Presidential palace seemed to highlight how isolated, even paranoid, Karzai has become. He effectively holes up there. Dignitaries and officials come to him. Straying to the public eye is a rare thing for Karzai. He is not a popular man.
Afghans complain that billions in aid have flowed into the country over eight years yet parts of Kabul still have no running water or electricity. Three of four roads into the capital built with foreign taxpayers' dollars are routinely patrolled by the Taliban and too dangerous to travel. And it is no secret that international commitment is wavering, as a skeptical public in countries like Canada and Britain asks why their soldiers must defend an Afghan government that many Afghans dismiss as predatory and corrupt.
The government's lack of legitimacy comes from much more than just a failed election process. "They had no legitimacy going into the election," said John Dempsey, a legal advisor with the United States Institute of Peace in Kabul. "In Afghanistan legitimacy comes much more from how one behaves in office rather than how one gets there."
It is from within the fortified boundaries of the palace compound known as the Arg that Hamid Karzai extends his rule over an unforgiving country playing host to 100,000 foreign troops and a flourishing insurgency.
It's safe to say that corruption exists at a high level, the lower levels, and everywhere in between, a senior U.S. official told me. In the past eight months corruption is much bigger than the Taliban, much bigger than Al Qaeda, in terms of rendering damage to Afghanistan.
Tackling corruption is the declared centerpiece of Karzai's second term and the key to his political survival. Karzai is said to understand that it's serious now, and will likely soon announce the prosecution of a high-level figure as proof he can be believed and even trusted.
Tangled roots of corruption
If you follow the guns, you get the guns. You follow the drugs, you get the drugs, said the official. But follow the money and you get the whole thing. The money trail doesn't lie.
Yet rooting out corruption will be a tricky calculation for Karzai, as some of those regarded as checkered figures in his regime are the allies who helped engineer his re-election.
The new vice-president, Marshal Mohamad Qasim Fahim, has alleged links to the drug trade. Karzai's own brother, Ahmad Wali Karzai, is suspected of dubious business dealings in Kandahar.
Karzai also made a lot of promises to known warlords during the campaign, and at one point hinted he would create new provinces to have governor positions to give out to his best supporters.
Allies like General Abdul Rashid Dostum, who had been living in exile, assured Karzai of the ethnic Uzbek vote. Dostum is accused of involvement in the killing of some 2000 Taliban prisoners that the US believes should be re-investigated as a war crime. Dostum is now back in Afghanistan, presumably to see what's next.
President Karzai is going to find it very difficult to hold up his end of the bargain with all these promises, said Dempsey, which could be troubling down the road.
Canada, for now, seems willing to give Karzai the chance. The U.S. has been clear in stating its commitment to Afghanistan is not open-ended or unconditional. Measurable results'is the catch-phrase diplomats and politicians now favour when describing what they expect.
The Karzai legacy?
With tenuous support both at home and abroad, Karzai might be faced with a dilemma: Does he jettison allies from his inner circle in order to appease his stewards? Everybody needs friends, and his relationship with the West has often been strained. It was evident again when Karzai recently remarked that NATO countries, including Canada, are complicit in nurturing corruption because of the way that aid money is doled out. Canada's Foreign Affairs Minister called the suggestion ludicrous.
The fact is, there are no illusions about what can be reformed in a country where more than a few people cannot rightly claim a blemish-free past. It is unreasonable to think that corruption will be completely erased from Afghanistan. Yet Karzai is already pressing an anti-corruption task force into duty, and calling for members of his government to be clean servants.
There is something else to consider as Hamid Karzai begins a new term: Legacy. There is the sense he may use this pivotal time to influence how the history books reflect on him.
"Was he a corrupt, self-serving leader who turned Afghanistan into essentially a basketcase?" said Dempsey, "Or does he want to be a leader who is remembered as the father of the nation?"
Few can get close enough to Hamid Karzai these days to ask. On the day of his inauguration, most of the capital had to be locked down just to have a small ceremony at the palace. Even people walking on empty streets were stopped at checkpoints.
Karzai strode along a soldier-flanked carpet in the courtyard and went immediately inside again. He told a mostly foreign audience what they wanted to hear. They had lunch. It was over.
It was far too dangerous to hold a parade, and reporters were banned from the palace -- which meant Hamid Karzai at least did not have the added worry of my lipstick.
