Karl Winfrid Eikenberry (10 November 1951-) was a US Army Lieutenant-General who served as the United States Ambassador to Afghanistan from 29 April 2009 to 25 July 2011, succeeding William Braucher Wood and preceding Ryan Crocker.
Biography[]
Karl Winfrid Eikenberry was born in Hammond, Indiana on 10 November 1951, and he graduated from West Point in 1973 as a US Army lieutenant. Eikenberry studied in China before rising through the ranks of the Army, serving two tours of duty during the Afghanistan War and serving as Commander of the Combined Forces Command - Afghanistan from 2009 to 2011. In 2009, President Barack Obama appointed Eikenberry as Ambassador to Afghanistan, even though appointing a senior army officer to an ambassadorship was highly unusual. Eikenberry oversaw the expansion of the Kabul embassy staff from 350 to 1,400 civilian personnel, but, in 2010, he was mired in controversy when a leak of classified diplomatic cables revealed that Eikenberry believed that a United States troop buildup in Afghanistan would actually harm the Afghan government, as it would make President Hamid Karzai's regime more dependent on US aid to fight off the Taliban. In 2011, Eikenberry resigned as Ambassador to become Director of the US Asia Security Initiative at the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center.