[Dawn] Afghanistan's Caped 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...
will visit Pakistain on Monday seeking the release of key Taliban prisoners as he tries to restart peace talks with the forces of Evil after they collapsed acrimoniously.
Pakistain is seen as key to ending the 12-year conflict in Afghanistan before presidential elections in April and the withdrawal of most of the 87,000 NATO
...the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. A collection of multinational and multilingual and multicultural armed forces, all of differing capabilities, working toward a common goal by pulling in different directions...
-led combat troops by the end of next year.
Ties between to the two neighbours appeared to improve at a summit hosted by Britannia in February, but have since frayed badly in a series of public rows that rekindled long-held mutual suspicion.
Omar Daudzai, the Afghan ambassador to Pakistain, said he was confident Karzai's visit would see progress on Afghanistan's calls for Pakistain to release Taliban prisoners and to back the peace talks being led by the Kabul government.
Mohammad Ismail Qasemyar, a member of the High Peace Council (HPC), the official Afghan government negotiators, said they would seek the release of the most senior Taliban figure tossed in the slammer
Book 'im, Mahmoud!
in Pakistain, former deputy leader Abdul Ghani Baradar.