Word: karzai
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...Karzai also knows that the U.S. commitment in his country is finite, and the need to survive after the Americans leave makes him more inclined to rely on such established hard men as Uzbek warlord General Rashid Dostum and Tajik strongman General Mohammed Fahim - even if that means turning a blind eye to their transgressions. He is also keen to take charge of negotiating a political settlement with the Taliban on his own timetable, and with less of a role for Pakistan than Washington might be ready to concede to Islamabad. Just as U.S. influence in Iraq declined precipitously once...
...worth remembering that Karzai was essentially parachuted into the country in the course of the U.S. invasion, tapped to lead a new post-Taliban government that would be founded largely on the Northern Alliance - the coalition of ethnic Tajik, Uzbek and Hazara former mujahedin warlords who had always fought the Taliban. A chieftain in the Popolzai tribe, Karzai was a prominent leader in Afghanistan's largest ethnic group, the Pashtun, which is also the social base of the Taliban. Still, his power base was limited, and creating an effective government forced him to cut deals with all manner of unsavory...
...some it may seem as if President Hamid Karzai has a death wish. The Afghan leader has lately begun sticking it to the U.S. and its Western allies - the only force protecting him from a surging Taliban, which hanged the last foreign-backed President when it reached Kabul in 1996. Having infuriated the Obama Administration by continuing to drag his feet on corruption - and then cozying up to Iran and China when Washington turned up the heat - Karzai ratcheted up the rhetoric last week. He accused the U.S. of trying to dominate his country, blamed the West for last year...
...bizarre as his behavior may seem, there may be a method in Karzai's madness. For one thing, he has begun denouncing the Western powers in his country because he knows he can - Karzai would have been cut adrift some time ago if there were any other viable alternative on whom the U.S. could pin its strategy. The wily President knows that the presence of foreign forces in his country is deeply unpopular, particularly when civilians are killed in the course of NATO military operations. Karzai, moreover, is humiliated and shown to be powerless when his protestations over such operations...
...critical to this war as Baghdad was to Iraq," Mullen says. But the military's description of the upcoming battle is curious: there won't be one. There will be a shift in the local gestalt, bypassing or re-engaging or seducing the local strongman, Ahmed Wali Karzai (the President's half brother); the Afghans will cobble together their own political solution, somehow. There will be some operations against the Taliban, mostly to prevent them from entering the city; indeed, U.S. troops may not show themselves in downtown Kandahar. "We can shura our way to success," a senior military official...