Retired US four-star general: Karzai's brother is 'a thug' Nov 12

http://www.adnkronos.com/AKI/English/Politics/?id=3.0.3960270699 Adnkronos International (AKI), the Italian news agency, reports that the U.S., in the person of Hillary Clinton, pressured Hamid Karzai rival Abdullah Abdullah to drop out of the presidential race. The way AKI describes it, this was the biggest foreign policy coup of the Obama administration to date. It was a four-or-more-way swindle in which the U.S. swung its full support behind Karzai, the Pakistani military agreed to make peace with the Taliban, and the Indians withdrew their troops from the Kashmir region. The $1.5 billion annual aid package we’re giving Pakistan was mentioned in the story, and probably had something to do with the transaction, if the story is true. The Asia Times online ran a similar story, which says, "In exchange for the pullout of the non-Pashtun Abdullah, Pakistan’s military has agreed to actively mediate between Washington and the Taliban over a reconciliation plan that will allow the U.S. to exit from Afghanistan, as it is doing in Iraq, with a semblance of success." Don’t get the impression that the Asia Times story corroborates the AKI story. Both stories were written by Syed Saleem Shahzad, who is the Pakistan bureau chief for the Asia Times and the South Asia correspondent for AKI.

So much for an exercise in democracy President Barack Obama had used as his rationale for escalating the war a few months after he took office. “I did order 21,000 additional troops there to make sure that we could secure the election, because I thought that was important.” It was. It showed that the United States and its NATO allies are fighting on the side of a corrupt and discredited government in a war, now in its ninth year, for which, according to Defense Secretary Robert Gates, there can be no purely military solution.

Could there be a more accurate description of the Obama-Brown message of congratulations to the fraudulently elected Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan? First the Palestinians held fair elections in 2006, voted for Hamas and were brutally punished for it – they still are – and then the Iranians held fraudulent elections in June which put back the weird Mahmoud Ahmadinejad whom everyone outside Iran (and a lot inside) regard as a dictator. But now we have the venal, corrupt, sectarian Karzai in power after a poll far more ambitiously rigged than the Iranian version, and – yup, we love him dearly and accept his totally fraudulent election. And now we are still trying to persuade his opponent to join a national unity government, an administration led by the man whose vote-stuffing was the very reason that same leader of the opposition – the good pseudo-Pashtun Abdullah Abdullah – refused to run in a second round of elections. And Karzai got his fawning congrats from the Obama-Brown twins. So that's OK then. Wagons Ho. For Westmoreland, read McChrystal. Send in the brave 40,000 to join the rest of the US cavalry as it fights its way west – or rather south-west – to the Khe Sanh of Afghanistan in Year Eight of the War on Terror.

The United Nations cannot account for tens of millions of dollars provided to the troubled Afghan election commission, according to two confidential U.N. audits and interviews with current and former senior diplomats.

"The White House expressed its frustration with the Afghan president, Hamid Karzai, for stalling over an election run-off yesterday, linking the political crisis for the first time to a decision on sending extra US troops to the country. Rahm Emanuel, the White House chief of staff, said the US administration could not make a decision about a request for 40,000 extra troops without a credible government in place in Kabul."

Eight years. We've been in Afghanistan longer than any other war in American history. The party of the president who invaded Afghanistan has been repudiated at the polls. Yet we still haven't altered the flawed strategy that allowed uneducated tribesmen with outdated weapons to defeat us year after year. We haven't learned a thing.

Many of us who marched against the Vietnam War 40 years ago have a terminal case of déjà vu over Afghanistan as we blunder into our ninth year of bombing and occupation. More than 90 percent of U.S. funding there goes to military purposes, and we still aren’t winning hearts or minds. Our Nobel Prize-winning president promised to “forge a hard-earned peace in Afghanistan,” but so far he has only threatened to escalate our troop level by tens of thousands. In the film, Greenwald and his team ask Afghans themselves if American troops are making them safer. The answers are no, no, no, a thousand times no. The film and its grisly images of mutilated wives and starving children for sale in displaced people camps is a graphic indictment of America’s reliance on military occupation by foreign soldiers. “There is no good reconstruction by the Americans in Afghanistan,” says a village chief. Former Taliban and women leaders and members of parliament, along with former CIA officers, show how the American occupation has been successful only in helping the Taliban to recruit more fighters, killing a disproportionate number of Afghan women, and enflaming a nationalist backlash by the Pashtun tribes who control the seamless border with Pakistan.

New Zealand has confirmed it has sent SAS troops into Afghanistan, the first time elite NZ troops have served in the country since 2006.

With false tallying of votes, coercion of voters and multiple and under-age voting, last week’s Afghan elections emerge to be marred by widespread and systematic fraud. "I was 15 when I woke up this morning," Naqivullah Ali told The Independent on Sunday, August 23. "But now I am 18 [the legal age for voting in Afghanistan]. “I have voted for Karzai because ...he has done a lot for us, and because we need stability in this country and he is the right man."

Is the United States planning to unseat President Karzai by letting James Carville set the Afghan campaign trail on fire? If his hunch about Ashraf Ghani is as strong as the one he had about Bill Clinton in 1996, we may see different leadership after August 20th. On January 25th, 2009, we introduced you to Mr. Ghani who is leading the opposition against Karzai. Read and learn his views if you did not catch the article at the time: Foreign Policy: using 'smart power' with Afghanistan.

Afghan President Hamid Karzai, setting out his election manifesto, vowed on Friday to make foreign troops sign a framework governing how they operate in a bid to limit civilians casualties.

Afghanistan's President, Hamid Karzai, has signed a law which "legalises" rape, women's groups and the United Nations warn. Critics claim the president helped rush the bill through parliament in a bid to appease Islamic fundamentalists ahead of elections in August. In a massive blow for women's rights, the new Shia Family Law negates the need for sexual consent between married couples, tacitly approves child marriage and restricts a woman's right to leave the home, according to UN papers

The US and its European allies are ­preparing to plant a high-profile figure in the heart of the Kabul government in a direct challenge to the Afghan president, Hamid Karzai, the Guardian has learned. The creation of a new chief executive or prime ministerial role is aimed at bypassing Karzai. In a further dilution of his power, it is proposed that money be diverted from the Kabul government to the provinces. Many US and European officials have become disillusioned with the extent of the corruption and incompetence in the Karzai government, but most now believe there are no credible alternatives, and predict the Afghan president will win re-election in August.

Karzai officials had hoped Hillary Clinton, now the US Secretary of State, would prove their ally in White House. But those hopes were dashed last week when she branded Afghanistan a "narco-state" with a government "plagued by limited capacity and widespread corruption" during her confirmation hearing. Ahmed Wali Karzai, the Afghan president's brother, was named last October in leaked US intelligence reports as a major narco-trafficker. The allegations, vigorously denied by both men, are widespread in Afghanistan but, until then, Western officials had refused to corroborate them. But the leak was seen as a shot across Mr Karzai's bows from the Bush administration, to make him clean up his act and rein in his brother. The flurry of criticism suggests the international community is less than happy with his response. Mrs Clinton's remarks coincided with stinging criticism from Nato's secretary general, Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, who said corrupt and inefficient government was as much to blame for instability as the insurgents. Writing in The Washington Post, he said: "The basic problem in Afghanistan is not too much Taliban; it's too little good governance."

Afghanistan's president said Thursday that 17 civilians were killed during clashes between U.S.-led troops and insurgents. The American military insisted all 32 killed in the fighting were militants. Civilian deaths are a major source of friction between Afghan President Hamid Karzai and foreign troops here, and the latest claims threatened to worsen the tensions.

President George W. Bush told Afghan President Hamid Karzai on Monday the United States would stand by the war-torn country despite a transition of power at the White House. Moving from one war zone to another, Bush flew secretly from Baghdad to Kabul, landing under cover of darkness for talks with Karzai and meetings with U.S. troops spearheading the fight against a resurgent Taliban. "I told the president you can count on the United States. Just like you've been able to count on this administration, you will be able to count on the next administration as well," Bush told a news conference in the Afghan capital alongside Karzai.

Afghan President Hamid Karzai said Wednesday he would bring down U.S. planes bombing villages if he could, in a sign of growing tension between Afghanistan and its Western backers as the Taliban insurgency grows in strength. As Western dissatisfaction with Karzai has grown over his failure to crack down on corruption and govern effectively, the Afghan president, facing elections next year, has hit back over the killing of dozens of civilians in foreign air strikes. In recent weeks, Karzai has repeatedly blamed the West for the worsening security in Afghanistan, saying NATO failed to target Taliban and al Qaeda sanctuaries in Pakistan and calling for the war to be taken out of Afghan villages. "We have no other choice, we have no power to stop the planes, if we could, if I could ... we would stop them and bring them down," Karzai told a news conference.

Angry protests have broken out in Afghanistan following the deaths of scores of civilians in an air attack by US-led coalition forces on Friday. Afghan President Hamid Karzai has condemned the air strike. The father of some victims said the coalition forces should come and see that all those killed were children and not Taliban. Note: Let me see if I understand this correctly. We have been in Afghanistan since the war began looking for Bin Laden. We COULDN'T find him, so we are now shooting down Afghan civilians???

Afghan President Hamid Karzai today ordered an investigation into a US-led airstrike on Friday that killed 15 people. At issue is whether the victims were armed Taliban, as the US military claims, or the innocent civilians that an Afghan governor believes died. The controversy underscores Afghans' longstanding sentiment that coalition forces are less than careful in planning attacks that may risk civilians. Government and coalition troops have killed 255 so far this year; the Taliban has killed 445.