Karzai's Demand Takes U.S. Military by Surprise
[An Nahar] Afghanistan's Caped President Hamid Maybe I'll join the Taliban Karzai
... A former Baltimore restaurateur, now 12th and current President of Afghanistan, displacing the legitimate president Rabbani in December 2004. He was installed as the dominant political figure after the removal of the Taliban regime in late 2001 in a vain attempt to put a Pashtun face on the successor state to the Taliban. After the 2004 presidential election, he was declared president regardless of what the actual vote count was. He won a second, even more dubious, five-year-term after the 2009 presidential election. His grip on reality has been slipping steadily since around 2007, probably from heavy drug use...
's demand for U.S. special forces to leave a key province came as a surprise to American commanders, who had no advance warning of the order, officials said Monday.
It remained unclear what led Karzai to issue a blunt announcement that U.S. special operations force would have two weeks to withdraw from the strategic Wardak province, southwest of the capital Kabul, two U.S. officials said.
I vote for the drugs. Does he stand by the demand today? For that matter, does he remember the demand today? | "We're not aware of any incident that would have generated this kind of response," one official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, told Agence La Belle France Presse.
In his statement Sunday, Karzai charged that Afghans working with U.S. forces had carried out torture and murder that has triggered local outrage.
The Pentagon confirmed that a special panel of Afghan officials and officers from the NATO
...the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. It's headquartered in Belgium. That sez it all....
-led International Security Assistance Fore (ISAF) were looking into Karzai's allegations.
"There has been a joint commission established by ISAF and the government of Afghanistan to look into the issues that surfaced over the weekend," front man George Little told news hounds.
"We're trying to see clarity from the government of Afghanistan," he added.
Asked if the United States would pull out its elite special operations units from the province, Little said: "It's premature to speculate on what the outcome of what our discussions would be."
Wardak is a deeply troubled flashpoint where a Chinook helicopter was shot down by the Taliban in August 2011, killing eight Afghans and 30 Americans. It was the deadliest single incident for American troops in the entire war.
Posted by: Fred 2013-02-26 |