Editor in Chief: Moh. Reza Huwaida Friday, March 29th, 2024

Former Afghan Leader Hamid Karzai Grew Estranged from His American Allies During 10 Years in Power

Former Afghan Leader Hamid Karzai Grew Estranged from His American Allies During 10 Years in Power

KABUL — Hamid Karzai was once handpicked by U.S. officials to lead his war-ravaged country, but he ended up bitterly estranged from them after spending a decade in office, a period when American aid money flooded Afghanistan and the United States struggled to build Afghan defense forces to fight Taliban insurgents in a war that continues today.
Now, the former president has been out of power for five years, although he remains an influential player in Afghan politics. His version of U.S.-Afghan relations during his tenure is sharply at odds with the American version, and he has often depicted himself as the maligned victim of a Western juggernaut that used Afghanistan — and him — for its own ends.
But a Washington Post series this month that exposed years of wasted or trouble-plagued U.S. efforts in Afghanistan — based on hundreds of previously classified interviews with U.S. officials — has partly vindicated Karzai’s arguments, even as it portrays his past government as a dysfunctional “kleptocracy” that was unprepared for modern governance.
“Much of it is true,” Karzai said of The Afghanistan Papers during a wide-ranging interview Tuesday at his highly secure residence here. He cited new findings in the report that echoed two of his longtime assertions: that Afghan contracts with U.S. agencies were widely plagued by corruption and that U.S. military officials played down problems with civilian casualties.
“A lot of effort was made to hide the facts, especially on civilian casualties,” he said. He described a “major fight” with U.S. military officials in 2007, in which he pressed them to stop raiding homes and bombing villages. “I told them so many times, ‘If you want to fight terrorism and bad people, I won’t stop you, but please leave the Afghan people alone,’ ” Karzai said.
The Post series was based on interviews conducted by the U.S. Office of the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction, which were not made public until The Post won a lawsuit demanding their release. The interviews showed widespread official disillusionment with efforts to build a modern Afghan state, economy and defense force, even as public U.S. official statements routinely painted a more upbeat picture. (The Washington Post)