President Hamid Karzai says the American-led coalition in Afghanistan needs to do more to respect Afghans’ independence.
Mr. Karzai said that he wanted American forces to stop arresting suspected Taliban and their sympathizers, and that the continued threat of arrest and
past mistreatment were discouraging Taliban from coming forward to lay
down their arms.
He criticized the American-led coalition as
prosecuting the war on terrorism in Afghan villages, saying the real
terrorist threat lay in sanctuaries of the Taliban and Al Qaeda in Pakistan.
The
president said that civilian casualties, which have dropped
substantially since last year, needed to cease completely. For nearly
two years the American-led coalition has refused to recognize the need
to create a trained police force, he said, leading to a critical lack
of law and order.
The comments came as Mr. Karzai is starting to point toward
re-election next year, after six years in office, and may be part of a
political calculus to appear more assertive in his dealings with
foreign powers as opponents line up to challenge him.
But they also follow a serious dip in his relations with some of the countries contributing to the NATO-led
security force and the reconstruction of Afghanistan, and indicate that
as the insurgency has escalated, so, too, has the chafing among allies.
Complaints have been rising for months among diplomats and
visiting foreign officials about what is seen as Mr. Karzai’s weak
leadership, in particular his inability to curb narcotics trafficking
and to remove ineffective or corrupt officials. Some diplomats have
even expressed dismay that, for lack of an alternative, the country and
its donors may face another five years of poor management by Mr.
Karzai.
He was quick to reject such criticism, pointing out
the “immense difficulties” that he and his government faced — “What is
it we have not gone through?” — while trying to rebuild a state that
was utterly destroyed.
He called instead for greater respect of
Afghanistan’s fierce independence, and for more attention to be paid to
building up the country, than doing things for it.
“For the
success of the world in Afghanistan, it would be better to recognize
this inherent character in Afghanistan and work with it and support
it,” he said, speaking at his presidential office. “Eventually, if the
world is to succeed in Afghanistan, it will be by building the Afghan
state, not by keeping it weak.”
Mr. Karzai said he was fighting
corruption, a problem that is among the chief complaints heard
frequently by diplomats and Afghans alike. Mr. Karzai said he had just
fired an official the previous day and would be firing more soon.
Yet
the president explained that Afghanistan had never had so much money
and resources pouring in, or seen such disparities in salaries, and was
simply not capable yet of preventing the corruption.
He
admitted that “lots of things” in the last six years could have been
handled better and singled out policies led by the United States,
namely tackling terrorism and handling the Taliban, both as prisoners
and on the battlefield.
On terrorism, he repeated a call he has made for several years, that sanctuaries across the border in Pakistan be closed off.
“There
is no way but to close the sanctuaries,” he said. “Pakistan will have
no peace, Pakistan’s progress will suffer, so will Afghanistan’s peace
and progress, so will the world’s. If you want to live, and live in
peace, and work for prosperity, that has to happen. The sanctuaries
must go, period.”
The deaths of civilians in the fighting have
also been a big problem, he said. “It seriously undermines our efforts
to have an effective campaign against terrorism,” he said. While NATO
says civilian casualties have declined in the last six months, Mr.
Karzai said that was not good enough.
“I am not happy with
civilian casualties coming down; I want an end to civilian casualties,”
he said. “As much as one may argue it’s difficult, I don’t accept that
argument.”
He added, “Because the war against terrorism is not
in Afghan villages, the war against terrorism is elsewhere, and that’s
where the war should go,” referring to the Taliban and Qaeda
sanctuaries in Pakistan.
He said the issue had caused tension between him and American
officials. “While those moments were very, very difficult, I must also
be fair to say that our partners in America have recognized my concerns
and have acted on them in good faith.”
One of the biggest mistakes of the last six years has been the
handling of the Taliban, he said, and the failure of his government to
guarantee former members the amnesty that Mr. Karzai promised when the
movement was toppled in December 2001.
He blamed mistreatment
by some warlords and American forces for driving the Taliban out of the
country, to Pakistan, where they regrouped and took up weapons again.
“Some
of the warlords, and the coalition forces at times, in certain areas of
the country, behaved in a manner that frightened the Taliban to move
away from Afghanistan,” he said. “That should not have happened.”
The weakness of his own government meant that he learned only much later of some of the things that were occurring, he said.
He
gave an example of a former member of the Taliban who was quietly
running a paint shop in Kabul and had been arrested three times by
American and Afghan security services.
“We have to make sure
that when a Talib comes to Afghanistan, that he is safe from arrest by
the coalition,” he said. “And we don’t come to know when the coalition
arrests them; it is a major problem for us, a problem that we have
spoken about repeatedly without solution.”
Asked if he could stop
American forces from arresting suspected Taliban or their sympathizers
in Afghanistan, he said, “We are working hard on it, very hard on it.”
He added, “It has to happen.”
Mr.
Karzai said he had not complained to the Americans about their
treatment of people in their custody, despite long detentions, because
he did not have details of specific cases.
Despite the many
problems, Mr. Karzai expressed optimism over Afghanistan’s path, and
said that the change of government in Pakistan could bring progress
against terrorism. “We began on a very good note,” he said of relations
with the new government, led by the party of former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, who was killed in December.
“I
am fairly confident of their good intentions,” he said. “If the current
government has the full backing of the military and intelligence
circles in Pakistan and with the good intentions that they have, things
will improve.”
The president said he supported the Pakistani
government’s efforts to make peace with Taliban there who were not a
threat to the rest of the world.
“But if the deal is with those
that are hard-core terrorists, Al Qaeda, and are bent upon sooner or
later again causing damage to Pakistan, and to Afghanistan and to the
rest of the world, then that’s wrong and we should definitely not do
it.”
He said he did not know Baitullah Mehsud,
the militant leader who has been accused of instigating Ms. Bhutto’s
assassination, but said he would send him some advice: “All that he is
doing is hurting his own people, that he shouldn’t do that.”