{"id":13069,"date":"2022-12-29T14:22:32","date_gmt":"2022-12-29T14:22:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/swn.af\/en\/?p=13069"},"modified":"2022-12-29T14:22:32","modified_gmt":"2022-12-29T14:22:32","slug":"national-discourse-needed-to-overcome-crisis-says-karzai","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/swn.af\/en\/2022\/12\/national-discourse-needed-to-overcome-crisis-says-karzai\/","title":{"rendered":"National discourse needed to overcome crisis, says Karzai"},"content":{"rendered":"

KABUL (SW) –\u00a0Hamid Karzai, the former president of Afghanistan has said that a national discourse is needed to overcome the current crisis in Afghanistan.<\/strong><\/p>\n

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Karzai is trying his best to understand Afghanistan\u2019s new rulers. His life is intertwined with theirs, reported the Post.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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\u201cI was not sure of my own safety,\u201d Karzai said of his decision to stay in Afghanistan after the Taliban takeover in 2021. \u201cBut I would have never left and I will never leave. This is my country.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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For more than a year, Karzai has lived under virtual house arrest at his villa in Kabul, where he sat recently for a candid interview with The Washington Post. The Taliban monitors his every move, he said, and has prevented him from leaving the capital. Yet Karzai has become the Taliban\u2019s most prominent critic inside Afghanistan, demanding that it allow all girls to attend school and create a government that reflects the country\u2019s ethnic diversity.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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The Taliban has not heeded his calls. But Karzai\u2019s persistence, and the fact that he has remained in Afghanistan as other political figures have fled, have prompted a reassessment of his legacy, even among Afghans who were highly critical of him during his nearly 13 years in power. Once viewed by many here as an American puppet \u2014 lambasted for running a government filled with warlords and marred by corruption \u2014 Karzai is now widely applauded for advocating for a more equitable Afghanistan.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\u201cHe had a bad image in the past,\u201d said Asadullah Waheedi, editor in chief of Maseer Daily, a local news website. \u201cNow he is trying to repair his image. He\u2019s working for a positive change in the country.\u201d<\/div>\n
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\u201cFor those people who were afraid of the Taliban, he became an inspiration for them.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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But if Karzai is to be more than a symbol, and to have a meaningful political afterlife, he will need to win the trust of Taliban leaders, many of whom still see him as an adversary.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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\u201cKarzai was the first individual who worked with the Americans for the occupation of Afghanistan,\u201d said Abdulhaq Hammad, a senior Taliban official in the Ministry of Information and Culture. \u201cHe was leading the occupation. So how can we trust him?\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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The collapse of the U.S.-backed government in Afghanistan last year may have appeared sudden, but it was preceded by 20 years of graft and mismanagement. From late 2001 to 2014, Karzai was the face of America\u2019s nation-building project. His critics contend he set the country on the path to ruin.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Despite the influx of billions in international aid, Karzai did little to build up Afghanistan. He also failed to instill a sense of national unity, relying heavily on the support of warlords who consolidated power by stoking ethnic divisions. His rule was also marked by corruption, according to the U.S. watchdog that tracked American reconstruction funds, as his Western and Afghan allies made millions of dollars through shady contracts.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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\u201cThey had no attachment with Afghanistan and its people,\u201d said Jafar Mahdavi, a former lawmaker who has remained in Kabul. \u201cThey came here to collect money and transfer it out of Afghanistan. All these mistakes of Karzai are the cause of the death of the republic.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Karzai said he took \u201cfull responsibility for the corruption and bribes in the delivery of services. \u2026 But the big contracts, big corruption, in hundreds of millions of dollars or millions of dollars, was clearly a United States of America thing.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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And it is the United States, he contends, that bears ultimate responsibility for the fate of Afghanistan.<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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\u201cThe war in Afghanistan was not our war,\u201d Karzai said. \u201cI was not a partner of the United States in that war against Afghan villages and homes. I changed from the moment I recognized that this war that is fought in the name of defeating terrorism is actually a war against the Afghan people.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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\u201cI called the Taliban \u2018brothers\u2019 for that reason,\u201d he explained.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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But the Taliban always saw Karzai as an enemy.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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After the militants took over the capital in 1996, one of their first acts was to torture and kill former Afghan president Mohammad Najibullah, hanging his body from a traffic pole.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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When their fighters entered Kabul in August 2021, Karzai feared for his life. He decided to go to the home of Abdullah Abdullah, another senior Afghan politician who had decided to stay.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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\u201cI don\u2019t leave my country when it is in trouble,\u201d Karzai said.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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But the presidential palace had already been abandoned by the time Taliban fighters arrived.\u00a0President Ashraf Ghani had fled.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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These days, Karzai holds near-daily meetings with Afghan politicians and religious and community leaders, and speaks regularly with U.S., European and U.N. officials.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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He often tweets out images of the gatherings at his home, and uses social media to draw attention to the plight of women and girls. Last week, he\u00a0criticized the Taliban\u00a0for banning women from Afghan universities. But there are limits to what he can say.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Earlier this year, after the Taliban minister of vice and virtue ordered female newscasters to cover their faces\u00a0on air, Karzai fired off a tweet encouraging journalists to disobey the order, Waheedi said. When the minister dispatched fighters to his house, Karzai tweeted that there had been a misunderstanding. The original tweet was deleted.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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\u201cKarzai is raising his voice, but he\u2019s so careful,\u201d Waheedi said. \u201cHe knows the Taliban, what to say and what to not say.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Karzai acknowledged that he faces pressure from the Taliban, especially the hard-liners. \u201cSome of the leaders come and speak to me very often, and very frank conversations,\u201d Karzai said. \u201cBut the relationship is at times tense as well because of what I say, because of what I ask of them.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Some believe Karzai is biding his time. He has strong relationships with the West, as well as with China, India, Russia and Iran. \u201cThese countries are expecting Karzai to stay here and play some role in normalizing relations with Taliban,\u201d Waheedi said. \u201cIf there\u2019s any possibility for government change, he would be the person to assemble people around him.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Karzai\u2019s supporters dismiss this, comparing his role to that of Afghanistan\u2019s former monarch during the 1960s and 1970s, before the Soviet invasion. \u201cIn this time, we need him as an elder,\u201d said Akram Khpalwak, a former governor of Farah province and ex-chairman of the Afghan High Peace Council.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Karzai insists he has \u201cno aspirations at all other than being in my own country and getting my children educated.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Karzai\u2019s ability to speak out, said Hammad, the Taliban official, \u201crepresents the patience\u201d of the Taliban, which has given him amnesty even though \u201che is a criminal responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Afghans.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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\u201cHis criticism of our policies will not bring any changes,\u201d Hammad insisted.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

ENDS<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

KABUL (SW) –\u00a0Hamid Karzai, the former president of Afghanistan has said that a national discourse is needed to overcome the current crisis in Afghanistan. Karzai is trying his best to understand Afghanistan\u2019s new rulers. His life is intertwined with theirs, reported the Post. \u201cI was not sure of my own safety,\u201d Karzai said of his […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":13071,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[990,984,976],"tags":[12,801],"class_list":["post-13069","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-latest","category-news","category-politics","tag-afghanistan","tag-karzai"],"views":75,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/swn.af\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13069","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/swn.af\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/swn.af\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/swn.af\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/swn.af\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13069"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/swn.af\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13069\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13072,"href":"https:\/\/swn.af\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13069\/revisions\/13072"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/swn.af\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13071"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/swn.af\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13069"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/swn.af\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13069"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/swn.af\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13069"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}