Karzai appeals for support in Taliban heartland

KANDAHAR: Afghan President Hamid Karzai on Sunday appealed to hundreds of tribal and religious leaders to support a major operation in their southern province, the heartland of a Taliban insurgency.

Karzai, accompanied by top Nato commander US General Stanley McChrystal, spoke to representatives and residents in Kandahar about renewed efforts to bring stability to the war-weary province.

“Right now the life of Kandahar is a very bad life,” Karzai said in a speech to the shura, a traditional council gathering, in a stuffy conference hall in Kandahar city.

“I need to start the operation to clean up the enemy. We need your help and support,” he said.

Many of the 30,000 troops US President Barack Obama ordered to Afghanistan late last year are heading to Kandahar, the birthplace of the Taliban movement and a hotbed of bombings, assassinations and lawlessness.

The Kandahar operation promises to be a major test of foreign alliance efforts to bring a quick end to the nearly nine-year war against increasingly emboldened insurgents.

“Tell the people to be part of the solution... Let’s co-operate, let’s co-ordinate,” he told the crowd.

Karzai’s spokesman Waheed Omar said the president would use the Kandahar visit to stress to wary locals that the campaign in the troubled area was a “process of stabilisation” rather than a major military offensive.

The president’s brother, head of Kandahar provincial council Ahmad Wali Karzai, told reporters after the speech that he thought the community’s response showed it supported the Nato-led build up in their area.

“The way the president described the military operation, there will no longer be a concern from the people,” he said.

But Nazar Mohammad, a 96-year-old tribal elder who attended the meeting, told AFP that local leaders needed to be given prominent posts in police, army and government if there was to be broad support for peace efforts in Kandahar.

“(Karzai) did not let anyone speak. I would have told him these people at the shura tell you that they will support you and your operations, but they are all lying. They won’t,” Mohammad said.

Published in the Express Tribune, June 14th, 2010.