Posted on 12/12/2003 9:01:56 PM PST by Stultis
KABUL, Afghanistan, Dec. 12 — The growing Taliban insurgency in southern and eastern Afghanistan is alienating the population and will eventually fail, President Hamid Karzai said Friday in an interview at the presidential palace.
Confident and at times combative, Mr. Karzai denied that parts of the country had become too dangerous for Afghan and foreign aid workers to enter. Popular support for the Taliban, he added, is fading.
"It's not working," he said, referring to the rising number of Taliban attacks that have killed 300 Afghans, including 100 policemen and 13 aid workers, this year. "It's working against them."
Sounding almost like the presidential candidate he will be if elections are held in Afghanistan as planned next year, Mr. Karzai said the country's situation had improved in the two years since he assumed the helm of a transitional administration. Despite threats, thousands of people participated in selecting the 500 delegates from around the country who gathered in Kabul this week for a historic constitutional convention, or loya jirga, he said.
"How come terrorism could not affect the participation of people in the elections of the loya jirga?" he asked. "How come they did not persuade them not to attend?"
Mr. Karzai, who has been criticized for moving too slowly to exert his authority beyond Kabul, the capital, is at a defining moment in his two-year presidency. The debate over the next two weeks by the constitutional assembly will be one of the biggest tests of his approach and of his ability to persuade Afghans to adopt his vision for the country.
When Mr. Karzai took charge two years ago after the fall of the Taliban, the country was riven by ethnic and factional divisions, and heavily militarized after 20 years of war. He has held the government together and kept the peace by co-opting the powerful warlords and including members of all factions in the decision-making process.
Yet parts of the country have become so insecure because of the Taliban insurgency that the United Nations special representative in Afghanistan, Lakhdar Brahimi, said on Friday that the organization might have to withdraw staff members. Human Rights Watch, meanwhile, criticized the loya jirga, citing reported cases of intimidation and buying of delegates so that the assembly will be dominated by the armed factional leaders and their proxies.
Mr. Karzai, who brushed aside the criticism, is pushing a draft constitution that would provide for a strong presidency and a parliament whose powers would be limited mainly to approving the budget. Judges would be appointed by the president.
Mr. Karzai said he wanted to avoid the instability of a parliamentary system and what he described as "coalition governments built by armed gangs." If adopted, the constitution would pave the way for elections in June, and Mr. Karzai has already said he will run.
In an unusual example of political brinkmanship, Mr. Karzai said he would not run for president if the convention adopted a parliamentary system with a prime minister as well as a president, as some delegates have said they want.
"How can I be president for a system that I have said I don't believe in?" he said Friday.
Mr. Karzai and his senior aides appeared confident that the draft constitution he is expected to present to the loya jirga this weekend will be passed without extensive alterations. Mr. Karzai described it as combination of democracy and Islam that was "suitable for the conditions in Afghanistan today."
It remained unclear how the debate would go. Some groups have criticized Mr. Karzai's plan as laying the groundwork for a possible dictatorship. Islamists may attack the proposed constitution for being too Westernized. And there is always the threat of disputes between the country's two largest ethnic groups, Pashtuns and Tajiks, over cultural issues like the language used in the Afghan national anthem.
Western diplomats have suggested that the measure will pass largely intact as presented by Mr. Karzai. That may be because discussions with the major factional leaders have been going on behind the scenes. Mr. Karzai denied reports of pre-assembly deals. "I've not done any deal with anybody," he said.
Sitting in his ornately decorated office, where he received a steady stream of delegations of tribesmen from around the country, Mr. Karzai remained optimistic about the future. He admitted, however, that his views contradicted most news reports and even the United Nations assessment of the situation.
He talked about the major achievements of the last year, including the reconstruction of the main Kabul-Kandahar highway, repair of a crucial tunnel and the opening of a university in Khost.
"You have zero percent inflation," he continued, listing economic accomplishments. "You have 30,000 Pakistanis working in Kabul. You have higher per capita income. You have surplus wheat. You have 30 percent growth. You have hundreds of homes coming up in Kandahar."
Pressed on his government's reputed weak response to the Taliban insurgency, which many observers believe is gaining strength, especially in the south and southeast, Mr. Karzai insisted his government retained political control throughout the country.
"We are a weak administration because of a lack of resources and human resources," he said. "But politically the country is strongly united to see this country do better. That is not understood by the media, nor the United Nations."
He agreed that security in parts of the country was too fragile for general elections to be held. "We have to work on that," he said.
Another group of visitors representing a separate source of tension in the country visited the president on Friday: the families of nine children killed in a botched American air attack last weekend.
In the interview, Mr. Karzai called on the United States military to review its use of air attacks to try to kill individual Taliban leaders. In the attack, American A-10 attack planes killed nine children and one adult when they struck the house of a former Taliban member in Ghazni Province in southern Afghanistan.
"This has to be reconsidered, has to be re-evaluated thoroughly," he said.
It's good to see that he "gets it." It's also good to see that he apparently knows who are his other enemies besides the Taliban, chief among them being the western mainstream media. The Slimes' reporters and editors would like nothing more than to see Karzai executed in some soccer stadium, so they can bludgeon President Bush with his corpse.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.