Word: karzai
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That said, there's still plenty to complain about. Afghanistan is years away from stability. The new national army has enlisted just 5,700 soldiers and last year suffered a 22% desertion rate, according to NATO officials. It doesn't venture far outside Kabul. In an interview with TIME, Karzai acknowledged that he needs help. "Afghanistan is not yet capable of standing on its own feet, of defending or sustaining itself," he says...
...Karzai government has attempted to rein in recalcitrant warlords. Most recently Karzai appointed Kandahar strongman Gul Agha Sherzai, a U.S.-installed warlord who has been dogged by accusations of corruption and nepotism, to a Cabinet position in Kabul as a way of keeping him under close watch. But Afghan officials say Karzai is wary of cracking down too hard for fear that the warlords will lash back. In Kabul alone, militias loyal to former President Burhanuddin Rabbani and current Defense Minister Mohammed Qasim Fahim number nearly 50,000. That's enough to overwhelm, if they wanted...
...year was $2.32 billion--equal to half of Afghanistan's official GDP. A Western anti-narcotics expert in Kabul estimates that 60% of the country's regional warlords are profiting from the drug traffic, using the cash to fund their armies and, in doing so, weakening the reach of Karzai's government in the provinces. A Cabinet minister who tried to stop traffickers two years ago was assassinated in Kabul, reportedly by a drug cartel. "Our national interests are at stake," says Mirwais Yasini, head of the Counter-Narcotics Directorate in Kabul. "We're facing anarchy...
...they are raising the stakes. Two months ago, the Taliban claimed responsibility for two suicide bombings that killed a Canadian and a British soldier. Last week, just the day before Karzai declared the Taliban "defeated," five members of an Afghan nonprofit group were shot dead by suspected militants. In Spin Boldak, a dusty smugglers' crossroads in southeastern Afghanistan, the Taliban have launched four major ambushes from Pakistani hideouts against Afghan government outposts over the past nine months, killing dozens. Abdul Raziq, the pro-U.S. garrison commander in Spin Boldak, says he has received intelligence from tribal allies in border...
While they sound upbeat, the commanders are worried that one catastrophic event--like an attack on Karzai, who will be campaigning outside Kabul this spring--could shatter the current fragile peace. The U.S. military presence in Afghanistan remains the only guarantor that the country will not fall apart. "If we left," says a U.S. official, "Karzai would be dead within days." So the troops are staying--and attempting, at least, to kick-start the reconstruction of a country the U.S. has now effectively inherited...