Afghan President Hamid Karzai called on the Taliban on Monday to cease fighting after the killing of Al Qaeda leader Osama Bin Laden, saying they should learn a lesson from his death. “The Taliban must learn a lesson from this. The Taliban should refrain from fighting,” Karzai told a nationally televised news conference.
“Again and again, for years and every day we have said that the war on terror is not in Afghan villages, not in Afghan houses of the poor and oppressed,” he told a gathering of tribal elders at his palace. “The war against terrorism is in its sources, in its financial sources, its sanctuaries, in its training bases, not in Afghanistan,” Karzai added, alluding to militant bases in neighbouring Pakistan. “It was proven that we were right,” he said to applause.
Karzai’s comments came only hours after US President Barack Obama announced Bin Laden, the mastermind of the September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States which sparked off the US-led invasion of Afghanistan, had been killed in a US-led operation.
Bin Laden’s death is highly symbolic but many analysts doubt it will mark a turning point in the worldwide war against a highly fractured network of militants, or end the battle against the Taliban in Afghanistan any sooner.
