KABUL, Afghanistan — The Afghan ambassador to Russia is known for his undiplomatic talk and his signature aviator glasses.
He has insulted a close ally of his host country. His second passport is an American one.
Qayyum Kochai, 76, may seem miscast as a young nation’s chief envoy to Russia, a country whose long, tricky relationship with Afghanistan is seen as critical to its future.
But Mr. Kochai is also an uncle of President Ashraf Ghani, and in Afghanistan, the most important diplomacy is often kept in the family.
The seat Mr. Kochai occupies was vacated by Azizullah Karzai, an older uncle of Mr. Ghani’s predecessor as president, Hamid Karzai; before that, the post was held by another president’s kinsman.
KABUL, Afghanistan — The Afghan ambassador to Russia is known for his undiplomatic talk and his signature aviator glasses. He has insulted a close ally of his host country. His second passport is an American one.
Qayyum Kochai, 76, may seem miscast as a young nation’s chief envoy to Russia, a country whose long, tricky relationship with Afghanistan is seen as critical to its future.
But Mr. Kochai is also an uncle of President Ashraf Ghani, and in Afghanistan, the most important diplomacy is often kept in the family.
The seat Mr. Kochai occupies was vacated by Azizullah Karzai, an older uncle of Mr. Ghani’s predecessor as president, Hamid Karzai; before that, the post was held by another president’s kinsman.
“Basically, the Moscow embassy has been at the service of the relatives of whoever has led the country,” said Kamal Nabizada, an Afghan businessman who once served as chargé d’affaires in Moscow.
Mr. Kochai’s history of leaving a trail of contentious remarks in his wake worries some. In an interview, however, he said he had not asked for the job, but was persuaded to take it because of his qualifications.
There was “a national need” for an experienced diplomat who speaks Russian and has followed the country, which he has since his student days and his time as a junior diplomat there in the late 1960s, he said.
In Moscow, Mr. Kochai will be managing a delicate relationship with a country that could tip the scale of the long war in Afghanistan in either direction, and, according to Afghan and American officials, has contributed recently to growing instability. They say that Russia is lending legitimacy to the Taliban insurgents by openly acknowledging contacts with them at a time when violence has escalated. At the same time, Russia has been cold to the Kabul government, apparently seeing Mr. Ghani as being too close to the United States at Russia’s expense.
Russian officials justify their contacts with the Taliban because they say the militants are fighting the Islamic State, which Russia fears particularly because it includes Central Asian elements that may threaten Russian territory. The United States commander in Afghanistan, however, in recent testimony to the Senate, said that the Russians were trying to undermine NATO’s mission in the country, and that it was the Afghan government that was fighting Islamic State, not the Taliban.
Historically, Russia has been an important player in Afghanistan, from the Great Game between Russia and Britain in the 19th century to the Soviet Union’s 1979 invasion of Afghanistan in support of its communist allies in Kabul.
Omar Nessar, the director of the Moscow-based Center for Contemporary Afghan Studies, said Russia had cooperated with the United States’ mission in Afghanistan for much of the past 15 years because it saw Al Qaeda as a shared threat. But the recent change of policy — to not only stop cooperating with the United States in Afghanistan, but also start working with the enemy — was as much shaped by events in Syria and Crimea, both places where the United States has challenged Russian interests.
Mr. Kochai, who will be working from a mansion designed by Lev Kekushev, an Art Nouveau architect, and given to the Afghan government by Lenin, agrees that he has a challenging task at hand.
“The government of Russia does not have faith in the government of Afghanistan, they think the Afghan government is a puppet of the Americans, which is baseless,” Mr. Kochai said. “I have talked to them a lot, that that perception of theirs is wrong. Afghanistan is an independent country — the U.S. has helped us a lot, militarily and economically, they haven’t destroyed our country, they haven’t invaded our country.”
He says he has advised Russian officials against establishing ties to the Taliban at the expense of the Afghan government, reminding them how Russians considered the Taliban regime of the 1990s an adversary and how the Russian Supreme Court declared the Taliban insurgency a terrorist group in 2003.
“My belief is that just as the Taliban are being used by Pakistan and have no free will of their own, tomorrow they will be used by the Russians,” Mr. Kochai said.
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Mr. Kochai’s position is the continuation of a long tradition that has kept some of the most sensitive projects within the family.
When Mr. Karzai, the former president, hoped to start peace talks with the Taliban, he tasked his brother — a restaurateur in the United States who pivoted, briefly, to become a lawmaker known for chronic absenteeism — with making secret trips to Saudi Arabia and meeting with insurgent leaders there. In the later part of his 13-year tenure, as Mr. Karzai became disenchanted with the United States, which had helped bring him to power, he grew increasingly close to Russia.
His choice for ambassador to Moscow was his uncle Azizullah, a mild-mannered man well into his 70s who had been living in the United States.
Mr. Ghani came into office with a promise of cleaning up what he called a mess of corruption and nepotism. At one public forum he said that if any of his relatives were seen in the highest circles of power, “you can chop off my hand.”
Many knew he had spoken too much, too soon.
Already, several family members and relatives were lurking in the shadows of the presidential palace, chief among them his uncle Mr. Kochai, who had returned to Afghanistan from California.
Mr. Kochai quickly became seen as an informal special envoy of Mr. Ghani, traveling to countries in the Persian Gulf to attend forums with the Taliban. And as he did, his comments about some of the powerful former warlords and strongmen in Kabul impeding peace created further problems for his nephew’s already shaky coalition government.
After one episode, Mr. Ghani had to personally travel to the villa of one angry former warlord in a visit that was seen as an apology for his uncle’s remarks.
On a visit to California to be with his ailing wife, Mr. Kochai appeared for nearly three hours on a call-in television show on a channel aimed at the Afghan diaspora, where he insulted Tajikistan, one of Russia’s closest allies and a former Soviet state. He said the booming narcotics business in Afghanistan was largely fueled by the mafia from Tajikistan, a country that did not have its own culture, but had adopted a Russian one. (He insists that his comments were taken out of context.)
Tajikistan reacted with anger, sending a letter of protest to the Afghan government. The Russian special envoy to Afghanistan called Mr. Kochai’s comments “abusive and unacceptable.” And the Afghan Foreign Ministry put out a statement saying the ambassador’s words did not represent the policy of the Afghan government.
Mr. Nessar, from the Center for Contemporary Afghan Studies, said the only apparent reason for Mr. Ghani to choose his uncle as ambassador to Russia was a hope that Moscow would respond positively to a gesture promising intimate access.
But, he said, “If there is a perception in Afghanistan that the ambassador’s personal relationship with the president will help in Russian policies, that is an incorrect perception.” He added: “Ghani sent his uncle based on this same perception,” to little avail.
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