Word: karzai
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...strategic logic of Pakistan's support for the Taliban is grounded in seeing Afghanistan as inextricably linked to Pakistan's existential conflict with India. Many in Pakistan's security establishment see the government of President Hamid Karzai as first and foremost a close ally of India's, and therefore a rival to Pakistan's strategic interests. The Obama Administration's exit strategy is unlikely to change that outlook. As long as Pakistan remains in conflict with India, the country's military establishment will be reluctant to "put all its eggs in the American basket," as a Pakistani analyst...
...leave Afghanistan sooner or later, and it's not likely to trust Washington to secure Pakistani interests there. As long as Pakistan remains locked in strategic competition with India, it will seek influence in Afghanistan - an objective that arguably aligns it more closely with the Taliban than with the Karzai government...
...agreements. So the news last weekend that President Barack Obama was entertaining the same idea, to reverse what he described as a war in Afghanistan that the U.S. was losing, was greeted with some raised eyebrows in the region. However, his suggestion was welcomed by Afghanistan's President, Hamid Karzai, who has been advocating a similar approach for some time. "This is approval of our previous stance, and we accept and praise it," Karzai said on Sunday. But Karzai's own exhortations to the Taliban to come to the negotiating table have always carried an air of desperation...
...Taliban is predominately based among Pashtuns, Afghanistan's largest ethnic group. Increasing Pashtun power in government would exacerbate ethnic tensions in the capital and in the relatively stable north, where Tajik, Uzbek and Hazara groups that helped Karzai into power are in the majority. Success in Iraq, moreover, was based on the presence of security forces numbering some 600,000 troops and police officers (Iraqi and foreign), whereas in Afghanistan, which is larger both in land mass and population, there are only 160,000 troops. The moderate Sunni insurgents in Iraq could be confident that they would be protected...
...should identify what are the limits of the concessions the government is willing to give," says Anwar-ul-Haq Ahadi, a former Finance Minister who is now running against Karzai for President. "Probably they will have some demands of their own, and we might have to be more accepting of those demands, like increased cultural conservatism. But if they say, 'We will not accept a leadership based on elections,' I am not sure we can accept that...