Karzai is trying to make a deal with Pakistan


June 14, 2010

NEW YORK: A former head of the Afghan intelligence service has told a leading American newspaper that he believes President Hamid Karzai is trying to make a deal with the Taliban and Pakistan, as Karzai has lost confidence in US strategy against the insurgency in his country.

“The president has lost confidence in the capability of either the coalition or his own government to protect this country,” Amrullah Saleh, the ex-intelligence chief, said in an interview with The New York Times. “President Karzai has never announced that Nato will lose, but the way that he does not proudly own the campaign shows that he doesn’t trust it is working.” According to Saleh, who along with Interior Minister Hanif Atmar, resigned from the post after a meeting with Karzai last week, the President is trying to reach out to the insurgents on his own in an effort to end the decades-old bloody insurgency.

During the meeting, which was called to discuss the Taliban attack on the peace jirga held outside Kabul last week, Karzai suggested that the attack might have been carried out by the US, as he threw out the evidence tabled before him by the intelligence chief. “The president did not show any interest in the evidence, none, he treated it like a piece of dirt,” The New York Times quoted Saleh, as saying.  Karzai has been pressing to strike his own deal with the Taliban and “Pakistan, the Taliban’s longtime supporter”, said Saleh and other officials.  Saleh is also deeply concerned by Karzai’s noticeably ‘softer’ attitude towards Pakistan, the Times said in a dispatch from Kabul.

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

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