A great man whose fall foretell the atrocities of 9/11. Were he alive, he'd definitley be PM of Afghanistan.
PM KArzai was a mamber of MAsood's Northern Alliance and IIRC is quite close to him.
I can remember hearing news reports about his assassination right after 9/11. What a great ally he would have been. Even though we were ignoring him at the time he was always attempting to get the U.S. on his side.
His legacy is probably also one of the reasons Karzai was such a popular choice to begin with.
PM KArzai was a mamber of MAsood's Northern Alliance and IIRC is quite close to him.
BBC
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/1634618.stm
Hamid Karzai is a highly influential figure and potentially commands the loyalty of large numbers of Afghans.
He is a powerful Pashtun tribal leader from the Taleban's political stronghold of Kandahar and a member of the same clan as the former Afghan king, Zahir Shah.
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Wikipedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hamid_Karzai
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Relations with the Taliban
When the Taliban emerged onto the political scene in the 1990s, Karzai was initially among their supporters. However, as with many other early Taliban supporters, he broke with the Taliban, citing distrust of their links to Pakistan. After the Taliban drove Rabbani out of Kabul in 1996, Karzai refused to serve as their U.N. ambassador. In 1997, Karzai joined many of his family members in the United States, from where he worked to reinstate Zahir Shah. His father was assassinated, presumably by Taliban agents, on July 14, 1999, and Karzai swore revenge against the Taliban by working to help overthrow them.
Afghan Leader
In the months following the September 11, 2001 attacks, Karzai together with Mujahideen loyal to the Afghan Northern Alliance worked with the United States to overthrow the Taliban in Afghanistan and muster support for a new government. In December 2001, exiled Afghan political leaders - many with no followers inside Afghanistan - gathered in Bonn, Germany, to agree new leadership structures. Under the December 5 Bonn Agreement they formed an interim Transitional Administration and named Karzai Chairman of a 29-member governing committee.
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I often wonder what might have been if Masoud and company remained alive.