[An Nahar] The Afghan president has criticized the timing of a U.S. drone strike that killed the Pak Taliban leader, after an angry Islamabad expressed fears the death would undermine planned peace talks.But we realized a while ago which side Hamid's on...
The killing Friday of Hakimullah Mehsud, the feared chief of the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistain (TTP) which has killed thousands in a six-year insurgency, sparked a furious response from the Pakistain government.
Islamabad was taking the first steps towards initiating talks with the snuffies when Mehsud was killed, prompting Interior Minister Chaudhry Nisar to accuse Washington of "scuttling" peace efforts.
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...
added his voice to the criticism, telling a U.S. Congress delegation visiting Kabul that the drone strike "took place at an unsuitable time", his office said in a statement released late Sunday.
The statement said Karzai hoped the grinding of the peace processor, still at an embryonic stage, did not suffer as a result.
The TTP operate separately from the Afghan Taliban but notionally pledge allegiance to the same leader, Mullah Omar
... a minor Pashtun commander in the war against the Soviets who made good as leader of the Taliban. As ruler of Afghanistan, he took the title
Leader of the Faithful. The imposition of Pashtunkhwa on the nation institutionalized ignorance and brutality in a country already notable for its own fair share of ignorance and brutality...
Karzai has been seeking to open peace talks with the Afghan Taliban to end 12 years of war, but the Islamist snuffies have refused to negotiate with his appointees, dismissing him as a puppet of Washington.
Karzai, who recently held talks with Pak Prime Minister
Nawaz Sharif... served two non-consecutive terms as prime minister, heads the Pakistain Moslem League (Nawaz). Noted for his spectacular corruption, the 1998 Pak nuclear test, border war with India, and for being tossed by General Musharraf...
in London, said fraught relations between Kabul and Islamabad had improved.
Pakistain was a key backer of the hardline 1996-2001 Taliban regime in Kabul and is believed to shelter some of the movement's top leaders.
Sharif came to power in May partly on a pledge to hold talks to try to end the TTP's bloody insurgency that has fueled instability in the nuclear-armed nation.
He is to hold a meeting of his cabinet security committee on Monday evening after a furious Nisar said "every aspect" of Islamabad's ties with Washington would be reviewed.
Relations had appeared to be warming after lurching from crisis to crisis in 2011 and 2012.