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US cedes full control of Bagram to Afghan forces
[Dawn] Afghanistan on Monday took full control of the Bagram military prison from the United States, healing one running sore in their testy relationship as US-led forces wind down more than a decade of war.President Hamid Maybe I'll join the TalibanKarzai ... 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 Pashtunface 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... had made the fate of the detention centre north of Kabul part of his ill-tempered push to regain illusory sovereignty over key matters from the Americans, ahead of next year's pullout of foreign combat troops. The US was long concerned that a total handover to Afghanistan's weak and corruption-prone security forces would allow suspected Taliban and Al-Qaeda Death Eaters housed at Bagram to return to the battlefield. But US Defence Secretary Chuck Hagel clinched an agreement with Karzai in a telephone call on Saturday, the Pentagon said, and the handover ceremony took place on Monday. "This ceremony highlights an increasingly confident, capable and sovereign Afghanistan," General Joseph Dunford, the commander of the international coalition in Afghanistan, said in a statement. Bagram was due to be turned over to Afghan forces on March 9, but the transfer was postponed at the last minute after Karzai indicated that "innocent" prisoners held there would be released. Posted by: Fred 2013-03-26 |
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