Afghan President Hamid Karzai told Pakistani Muslim clerics on Friday to stop backing the ousted Taliban and reiterated an amnesty to members of the radical militia who had not been involved in âbloody oppressionâ. Speaking to a group of Afghan clerics at his heavily fortified presidential palace, Mr Karzai said Pakistani clerics and preachers were involved in recruiting and sending members of the Taliban to destabilise Afghanistan. âI am addressing those who, in the name of madrassas, are building a force of war against Afghanistan,â he said, referring to Muslim religious schools. âI am calling on Pakistani clerics to stand by their Afghan counterparts and not cause misery for Afghanistan.â Many of the first wave of Taliban fighters emerged from religious schools on the Pakistani side of the border in the early 1990s. The Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal alliance controls the North West Frontier Province and has a power share in Balochistan, the two Pakistani provinces bordering Afghanistan. While local officials in Pakistan deny that religious seminaries near the Afghan border are being used to breed Taliban fighters, some young militants caught in Afghanistan said they were recruited in Pakistani madrassas and mosques.
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