Afghan president, Hamid Karzai, threatens to block Nato offensive

[IndianaGreen]

From The Sunday Times

April 11, 2010

Afghan president, Hamid Karzai, threatens to block Nato offensive

Stephen Grey in Kandahar

The president of Afghanistan, Hamid Karzai, has cast doubt over Nato’s planned summer offensive against the Taliban in the southern province of Kandahar, as more than 10,000 American troops pour in for the fight.

Karzai threatened to delay or even cancel the operation — one of the biggest of the nine-year war — after being confronted in Kandahar by elders who said it would bring strife, not security, to his home province.

Visiting last week to rally support for the offensive, the president was instead overwhelmed by a barrage of complaints about corruption and misrule. As he was heckled at a shura of 1,500 tribal leaders and elders, he appeared to offer them a veto over military action. “Are you happy or unhappy for the operation to be carried out?” he asked.

The elders shouted back: “We are not happy.”

“Then until the time you say you are happy, the operation will not happen,” Karzai replied.

General Stanley McChrystal, the Nato commander, who was sitting behind him, looked distinctly apprehensive. The remarks have compounded US anger and bewilderment with Karzai, who has already accused the United States of rigging last year’s presidential elections and even threatened to switch sides to join the Taliban.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/afghanistan/article7094217.ece

Obama's florid speeches can't hide his failed and bankrupt war policies. He should have brought the troops home early last year, instead we will have to endure a death of a thousand cuts as America joins other powers that were driven out of Afghanistan.

[NJmaverick]

1. Posting right wing propaganda from Ruppert Murdock owned TImes

just to support your failed position gets you a great big unrec

[IndianaGreen]

2. From a reporter right on site

and a story being reported by other British newspapers.

Keep playing the ostrich!

From The Toronto Sun:

After 31 years of conflict, nearly three million dead, millions more refugees and frightful poverty, Afghans yearn for peace.

For the past two years, Karzai and his warlord allies have been holding peace talks with the Taliban in Saudi Arabia.

Karzai knows the only way to end the Afghan conflict is to enfranchise the nation's Pashtun majority and its fighting arm, the Taliban. Political compromise with the Taliban is the only - and inevitable - solution.

But the Obama administration, misadvised by Washington neocons and other hardliners, is determined to "win" a military victory in Afghanistan (whatever that means) to save face as a great power and impose a settlement that leaves it in control of strategic Afghanistan.

Accordingly, the U.S. thwarted Karzai's peace talks by getting Pakistan, currently the recipient of $7 billion in U.S. cash, to arrest senior Taliban leaders sheltering there who had been part of the ongoing peace negotiations with Kabul.

It was Karzai's turn to be enraged. So he began openly defying his American patrons and adopting an independent position. The puppet was cutting his strings.

http://www.torontosun.com/comment/columnists/eric_margolis/2010/04/09/13530691.html

[msongs]

3. afghanistan = 2000 years of corruption n misrule = US is arrogant to think otherwise nt

[IndianaGreen]

4. Obama's Big New AfPak Problems

Related story:

Obama's Big New AfPak Problems

As President Barack Obama turns his attention to nuclear weapons, his AfPak strategy appears to be going south, even as polling shows his approach to be popular at home. That would be so even if Kyrgyzstan, home to the last remaining U.S. base in Central Asia, had not just experienced a sudden revolution in which the new powers appear to be opponents of the U.S. military presence in their country.

<snip>

Then, appearing with General Stanley McChrystal before 1500 tribal elders, Karzai went so far as to say that he may not support the coming summer offensive in the Kandahar region.

<snip>

And there has been the ongoing problem of civilian deaths in Afghanistan at the hands of U.S. and allied forces. Each death makes the expanded mission there that much less likely to succeed.

<snip>

A revolution in Kyrgyzstan, with all the other headaches surrounding his AfPak strategy, was approximately the last thing Barack Obama needed. He barely kept the Manas air base open last year, increasing U.S. payments to the Kyrgyz government. Now the price will only go up, if indeed there is a deal to be made with the new government when it fully emerges. And we'll see if the country's new leadership will go along with a second U.S. base there, just announced in the last month, a rather hazy anti-terrorism center.

This is all an awful lot of trouble to go to in order to pursue a nation-building strategy, even a limited one, in a country that is highly resistant to nation-building.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/william-bradley/obamas-big-new-afpak-prob_b_529622.html

[Aramchek]

5. Karzai really doesn't want the Taliban to be challenged, does he?

[ClarkUSA]

6. Aw, give the opium fiend a break! After all, he's applying for membership to their ally, Al-Qaeda.

The hazing process is literally murder, I hear. :P