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| Afghanistan |
| Karzai visits landslide victims |
| 2014-05-08 |
[The Peninsula] 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... visited a refugee camp for victims of a deadly landslide yesterday, trying to calm villagers angered by the slow delivery of emergency aid and an initial government refusal to help retrieve bodies. More than 4,000 villagers were displaced by Friday's disaster, which buried some 300 homes in the northern village of Aab Bareek in up to 50 metres of mud, killing hundreds, and left nearly 700 other houses uninhabitable. Aid agencies have rushed tonnes of emergency supplies to the capital of Badakhshan province but distribution has been hindered by scuffles between the victims, the poor from nearby villages and security forces. Karzai made his first direct comments on the disaster, and offered prayers at the site of the landslide. "My minister of rural development will remain here and will build you new shelters, provide you with food and water and won't leave until it is all done," he told hundreds of victims sitting in a dusty open area near the camp. Villagers have complained that the government has let them down, failing to provide shelter and food and not helping them recover the remains of their loved ones. But Karzai said the government would help dig out bodies after it had said the site would be left as a mass grave. |
| Posted by:Fred |