As the war in Afghanistan hit the 10-year mark on Friday, President Hamid Karzai claimed the Taliban were being propped up by Pakistan and that the militants could not lift a finger without Pakistan’s consent. The war will only end when something is done to rout insurgents from their sanctuaries across the border, he said.
President Karzai admitted his government and the US-led NATO mission had failed to provide security to Afghans in an interview to mark 10 years of war. Karzai, who was forced to review his efforts to broker a settlement after his peace envoy Burhanuddin Rabbani was assassinated last month, also told the BBC that he had not ruled out peace talks with the insurgents. “We’ve done terribly badly in providing security to the Afghan people and this is the greatest shortcoming of our government and of our international partners,” he said.
“What we should do is to provide better, more predictable environment of security to the Afghan citizens, and that the international community and the Afghan government definitely have failed (to do),” he added. The Afghan president, who took office shortly after the 2001 US-led invasion brought down the Taliban regime, denied that Rabbani’s killing by a suicide bomber on September 20 had suspended his quest for talks with the Taliban. “We have not said that we will not talk to them. We’ve said we don’t know who to talk to, we don’t have an address,” he told the BBC.
The assassin who killed Rabbani with explosives under his turban had secured a private audience with the former Afghan president by posing as a peace emissary from the Taliban leadership. “We were asking for negotiations,” said Karzai. “We wanted to talk to them, but with the assassination of president Rabbani, and by someone who came in the name of a messenger from Taliban, now we know that we don’t have an address to talk to,” the president added. Until a representative emerges “we’ll not be able to talk to Taliban because we don’t know where to find them”, he told the BBC.
Karzai has promised to call a traditional assembly of national leaders, the loya jirga, in order to decide on a peace strategy after coming under mounting calls to drop talks with the Taliban from the agenda entirely. On the other hand, the Taliban vowed to keep fighting until all foreign forces left Afghanistan in a statement on Friday to mark the 10th anniversary of the US military campaign in the country.
The group’s fight in the last decade, “even with scarce weapons and equipment…forced the occupiers, who intended to stay forever, to rethink their position”, Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid said in an English-language statement.
‘Taliban can’t raise a finger without Pakistan’
