Who would have imagined that after waging a 10-year war in Afghanistan, the Russians would be back as mediators and peacemakers in the now US-occupied country.
The US-crafted Afghan regime with two rulers—a president and a chief executive—had little chance of success. It is coming unhinged amid political squabbling as the Taliban make military gains across the country.
Outgoing Afghan President Hamid Karzai took a swipe at the US and Pakistani accusing both of not wanting peace in Afghanistan. Installed by the US following the ouster of Taliban from power, Karzai presided over massive corruption in the country. He had also spend nearly a decade in refugee camps in Pakistan. Ashraf Ghani will be sworn in as president on September 29.
The US and its British allies are running secret prisons in Afghanistan away from any oversight or control of the Afghan government. The US-run torture chamber at Bagram was taken over by Afghan forces earlier this year releasing many people that were never charged with any crime. Two secret prisons have been discovered at Qandar and in Helmand province; the latter being run by the British. Afghan President Hamid Karzai is very upset.
With the death of warlord, 'Marshal' Mohammad Qasim Fahim (of natural causes, mind you), Afghanistan's stock of warlords is dwindling. President Hamid Karzai expressed grief at losing his 'first” vice president. Three days of mourning have been declared. Who will mourn the butcher from the north?
President Hamid Karzai has added one more condition—start of peace talks with the Taliban—before he would agree to sign the Bilateral Security Agreement with the US giving US officials serious heart burn.
Robert Gates, the former US Defence Secretary has confirmed in writing what Afghan President Hamid Karzai had said all along: that the US wants to manipulate the 2014 presidential election in Afghanistan the way it tried in 2009. In his about to be published memoirs, Gates says the late US diplomat for Afghanistan, Richard Holbrooke was actively involved in undermining Karzai.
he Americans find themselves at their wits end with Afghan President Hamid Karzai. Even as lame duck president, he has put his spanner in the Bilateral Security Agreement that the Americans desperately want signed immediately. They have threatened to withdraw all their forces and leave Afghanistan to its fate unless it is signed immediately but Karzai remains unfazed. He seems to dare them to walk away.
President Hamid Karzai wants American troops to stay in Afghanistan beyond the 2014 deadline and he has agreed to all their terms but he does not want to take responsibility for the deal. He is trying to be clever by asking the Loya Jirga to take responsibility while at the same time he has said its signing should be postponed until after the presidential elections next April.
Afghan President Hamid Karzai is a man in a hurry. He knows his time is running out and with it his chances of survival. He is desperate to make a deal with the Taliban but they are unwilling because they see him as an American puppet.
With the opening of the Taliban office in Doha, Qatar, Hamid Karzai feels he will be left to hang high and dry if the Americans strike a deal with the resistance group. He has hit his now-familiar tantrum to be noticed. Will he get anywhere with it?
Hamid Karzai is a desperate man. He knows his time is running out and he is running around from pillar to post in an attempt to save his skind—and head. He may be wasting his time.
It seems the Americans never miss an opportunity to get sadistic pleasure out of humiliating Muslims. If it is not physical abuse like torture and rape, they are busy burning copies of the Qur’an.
True, there is no shortage of armchair warriors in Washington insisting that the US cannot cut and run, or that President Barack Obama does not have the spine for a fight.
Afghanistan’s presidential elections held on August 20 may be over but the uncertainty continues; indeed it has deepened with no clear winner. The two front-runners represent opposite sides in Afghanistan’s ethnic divide — the incumbent Hamid Karzai is a Pashtun while his main challenger, Abdullah Abdullah represents the Tajik-Uzbek bloc...
When Americans are not winning hearts and minds by dropping 1,000-pound bombs on wedding parties or mud-hut dwelling women and children as they did in Farah province on May 4 killing 147 civilians, 93 of them children, they are busy delivering democracy through cruise missiles...
Long before Barack Obama was sworn in as president, the Americans had started to mutter darkly that Hamid Karzai was not only ineffective, he presided over a government that was corrupt and harbored drug and warlords in Afghanistan. While not all charges are false, Karzai alone cannot be blamed for all of them; it appears like another desperate attempt to shift blame for America's own disastrous policies.
With the surge in Iraq to establish security an utter failure and the British having fled Basra, Washington’s propagandists are in no mood to set another trap for themselves by making bold policy pronouncements about Afghanistan. A detailed review, forced by the failure of America and NATO to subdue the resistance in Afghanistan, has been launched without fanfare.
The year 2007 has turned out to be one of the costliest in blood and lives since the invasion and occupation of Afghanistan by the US in October 2001. On November 19 a bomb-explosion killed seven people but missed Ghulam Dastagir Azad, governor of Nimroz province, the intended target in the town of Zaranj. On the same day an attack on a military bus in Kabul was thwarted when the bomber was prevented from boarding. Two days earlier a roadside bomb near Qandahar had killed two Canadian soldiers and wounded three others, bringing the Canadian death toll to 73.
