Hamid Karzai blames Britain for Taliban resurgence

[sabra]

Source: Sunday TimesOnline

The president of Afghanistan, Hamid Karzai, has blamed Britain for the resurgence of the Taliban and its growing activity in large tracts of the country.

His remarks, made to Afghan MPs, follow a clash with Gordon Brown over the Kabul regime’s links with warlords and drugs barons.

Karzai claims Brown has threatened to withdraw British troops from Helmand province, where 31 of them have died this year, if the president reinstates two provincial governors sacked for alleged dealings in the heroin trade.

One of them is Sher Mohammed Akhundzada, the former governor of Helmand, who was forced out under British pressure two years ago after nine tons of opium and heroin were discovered in his basement. Karzai’s plan to reinstate the governors has alarmed western diplomats in Kabul and dismayed British officials.

...

However, the Taliban have made advances since Akhundzada’s departure and drug production has increased. Karzai believes Britain’s “interference” is to blame. A senior diplomat said: “UK taxpayers subsidise and British troops die to defend an administration which is paranoid, self-deluding and anti-British.”

Read more: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/asia/article4692252.ece

[no_hypocrisy]

1. Did Cheney tell Karzai to say that?

[louis-t]

2. The mayor of Kabul says.....

"Leave our drug dealers alone."

[Winston.]

3. This is not about stopping the heroin trade.

It's about who controls and profits from it.

[Winston.]

4. ...

US presidential contender Barack Obama, on a whirlwind tour of the war zones, is backslapping a familiar figure.

I do a double-take at that figure alongside Senator Obama. Yes it is him. The bearded bear-like figure beams as he stands alongside the-man-who-would-be US president. US media reports describe him as "a no nonsense, bullish former warlord".

He is Gul Agha Sherzai, Governor of Nangahar province.

I stare at the screen in disbelief at the man, who in early 2002, played a key part in a scheme that ensured the continued opium and heroin operations of one of country's biggest drug lords, Taliban ally Haji Bashar Noorzai.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2008/07/21/2310024.htm

[High Plains]

5. The UN thinks the Taliban is getting $300 million or so a year from opium.

That buys a lot of weapons.

But every expert I talk to says a whole lot of people, including powerful figures in the Karzai government, are profiting from the trade, too.

How do we get out of this mess?