Word: karzai
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...KARZAI IN CHARGE...
...country's first free elections, scheduled for June. So far, the U.N. has managed to register just 9% of the country's 10.5 million eligible voters. Taliban rebels have threatened to kill U.N.-sponsored election teams and burn down schools and mosques where Afghans are signing up to vote. Karzai said last week that the elections may be postponed because of lagging voter registration. Despite the Bush Administration's desire to trumpet the birth of Afghan democracy, a delay is almost inevitable. "We should have five years to pull off these elections, not four months," says a U.N. official. Lieut...
...Both American and Afghan officials say that if the U.S. fails to stabilize Afghanistan and establish conditions for democracy, the country could quickly slide into the kind of chaos that bin Laden and his ilk would no doubt love to exploit. "If the U.S. military pulls out," Karzai tells TIME, "al-Qaeda would be back within six months, plotting attacks against America...
Many Afghans wonder whether Karzai is tough enough to rule a land long defined by tribal rivalries and blood feuds. "Karzai?" says a waiter at a kebab restaurant in Kabul. "He's too nice. He should be a schoolteacher." Educated in India, the President, 46, says he was influenced by Mohandas Gandhi, which may account for his conciliatory style. He seems more at ease asking questions than he does issuing orders. "No one is close to having Karzai's control and popularity," says Khalilzad. "He has moral authority, and he's not seen as ethnically prejudiced." But that's different...
...best, Karzai's government has managed to restore dignity to parts of the country brutalized by the Taliban's tyranny. The sky above Kabul is filled with kites, which were banned as un-Islamic under the Taliban. Giggling teenagers pack the capital's 40 or so Internet cafes. Since 2002, some 3 million new students have enrolled in Afghan schools, partly as a result of the lifting of the Taliban's ban on education for girls ages 10 and older. A few young women in Kabul have shed the burqas that were the most obvious symbols of the Taliban...