Afghanistan’s President Slams Western War Strategy

Hamid Karzai, the president of Afghanistan, demanded that the western powers with troops in his country reassess their approach to fighting the war in Afghanistan. The ingrate went so far as to say too many Afghanis were dying. Someone needs to explain to him that he is a puppet before he receives the Allende treatment and winds up dead.

In a press conference yesterday, he said, “We need to reassess the manner in which the war on terror is conducted. We will continue to suffer if we don't stop the source of terrorism.” Translated means, the current approach has failed for years, and it isn’t getting any better. He added, “I strongly believe . . . that we must engage strategically in disarming terrorism by stopping their sources of supply of money, training, equipment and motivation.”

The president seems to understand that the war is about more than killing militants. “It is not acceptable for us that in all this fighting, Afghans are dying. In the last three to four weeks, 500 to 600 Afghans were killed. [Even] if they are Taliban, they are sons of this land.” It goes back to funding and motivation. Because opiates are illegal, they carry a hefty premium on the black market, which finds it way into the poorly regulated arms markets. Afghanistan accounts for about 80% of the world’s opium, all of it under the control of warlords and other undesirables.

Before anyone suggests that President Karzai has gone soft on terror, here’s what he said about Al Qaeda big-shot Ayman al-Zawahri’s demand for an Afghan uprising, “He is the one who has been destroying our mosques, our schools, our vineyards, our orchards. He and his friends, the terrorists, trained guns on Afghan lives, including children and women. He killed Afghans for years, and then he went to America and brought down the twin towers. Even if the rest of the world did not want him, we in Afghanistan want him arrested and put before justice.”

The real problem with Afghanistan is its lack of oil. If there were millions of barrels of crude under Afghanistan, the Busheviks would have make a greater effort there. Instead, there are 130,000 US troops in Iraq that could otherwise be hunting the Taliban holdouts in Afghanistan. As it is, the White House has failed in Afghanistan by trying in Iraq. When the Afghani president the Americans installed starts to call for strategic rethinking, it is long past time to rethink.

© Copyright 2006 by The Kensington Review, Jeff Myhre, PhD, Editor. No part of this publication may be reproduced without written consent. Produced using Fedora Linux.

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