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| Afghanistan | |
| Karzai says Afghan war not fought in country's interest | |
| 2014-03-04 | |
Maybe I'll join the TalibanKarzai ... A former Baltimore restaurateur, now 12th and current President of Afghanistan, displacing the legitimate president Rabbani in December 2004. He was installed as the dominant political figure after the removal of the Taliban regime in late 2001 in a vain attempt to put a Pashtunface on the successor state to the Taliban. After the 2004 presidential election, he was declared president regardless of what the actual vote count was. He won a second, even more dubious, five-year-term after the 2009 presidential election. His grip on reality has been slipping steadily since around 2007, probably from heavy drug use... said in an interview with the Washington Post that the war in Afghanistan was not fought with his country's interests in mind. "Afghans died in a war that's not ours," Karzai said in the interview published on Sunday, just a month before an election to pick his successor. He was quoted as saying he was certain the 12-year-old war, America's longest and launched after the attacks of Sept 11, 2001, was "for the US security and for the Western interest." Karzai's refusal to sign a security deal with Washington that would permit foreign troops to stay in Afghanistan beyond this year has frustrated the White House, and President Barack Obama Jedi mind meld... has told the Pentagon to prepare for the possibility that no US troops will be left in Afghanistan after 2014. Obama told Karzai in a phone call on Tuesday he had given the order to the Pentagon. The phone call was the first substantive discussion between the two leaders since June. But staking out a new position, the White House said in a statement it would leave open the possibility of concluding the bilateral security agreement later this year. "It's good for them to sign it with my successor," Karzai told the Post. He has insisted the United States must jump-start peace talks with Taliban Death Eaters and end raids and strikes on Afghan homes before he signs the deal. The NATO ...the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. Originally it was a mutual defense pact directed against an expansionist Soviet Union. In later years it evolved into a mechanism for picking the American pocket while criticizing the cut of the American pants... -led force in Afghanistan has a current strength of more than 52,000 soldiers, including 33,600 US troops. More than 3,400 coalition forces have been killed in the fight against the Taliban, including more than 2,300 US troops. While Afghanistan's police and army are seen as having made big strides in their ability to fight bad boys, doubts remain about whether they can keep a still-potent Taliban at bay, especially in remote areas. In the interview, the Afghan leader said he was deeply troubled by the war's casualties, including those in US military operations, and felt betrayed by what he described as an insufficient US focus on going after Taliban sanctuaries in Pakistain rather than in Afghan villages. Civilian casualties in Afghanistan dissipated his country's"common cause" with the United States, Karzai told the newspaper. Criticising his US allies was the only way to secure a response by Washington to his concerns, he added. The Post said Karzai told his interviewers as he escorted them out of his office on Saturday night: "To the American people, give them my best wishes and my gratitude. To the US government, give them my anger, my extreme anger." | |
| Posted by:Fred |