Karzai demands timeline for end to military intervention
Raza Hussain
November 26, 2008 President Hamid Karzai demanded at a meeting with a UN Security Council team on Tuesday that the international community set a “timeline” for ending military intervention in Afghanistan, his office said.
Karzai told a delegation from the Council that his country needed to know how long the US-led “war on terror” was going to be fought in Afghanistan or it would have to seek a political solution to a Taliban-led insurgency.
“The international community should give us a timeline of how long or how far the ‘war on terrorism’ will go,” Karzai’s chief spokesman Homayun Hamidzada quoted the president as telling the delegation.
“If we don’t have a clear idea of how long it will be, the Afghan government has no choice but to seek political solutions,” he told AFP, adding this included “starting to talk to Taliban and those opposing the government.” The delegation arrived on Monday on a fact-finding mission with security in Afghanistan at its weakest since the ouster of the Taliban.
A statement released after the meeting said Karzai had told the 15 UN ambassadors and representatives that Afghans were “not hopeful for the future” because of the poor security situation. “The president emphasised that Afghanistan is committed to the war against Al-Qaeda and those Taliban who take orders from outside,” it said.
“But we will talk with those Taliban who for various reasons have joined the opposition and are not against the Afghan constitution,” the statement said. Karzai was also critical of the situation that sees the Taliban controlling a number of districts in provinces with large numbers of international soldiers. “We need to ensure the Afghan government is in control of its entire territory,” Hamidzada said.
“Having pockets of territory like in southern Afghanistan and Helmand under Taliban control is unacceptable.” Karzai also repeated to the UN group his demands that the international forces stop causing civilian casualties in their operations against insurgents and focus their efforts on militant bases in Pakistan, his spokesman said.
“He emphasised that the ‘war on terror’ cannot be fought in Afghan villages. “It must be taken to (militant) sanctuaries and safe havens. That is why we are having civilian casualties — because we are ignoring the source of the problem,” Hamidzada said.
Meanwhile, British Foreign Secretary David Miliband on Tuesday renewed his call for other countries to send more troops to Afghanistan, as he arrived in the country to visit British forces.
Speaking to BBC Radio 4’s Today programme, Miliband did not rule out an expansion in the UK’s military presence but said reports that an extra 2,000 troops could be deployed were “invented”.
“We want to make sure we are playing our full role. But equally we’ve got to make sure that all countries are bearing their fair share of the burden. That’s the discussion we will have,” Miliband said.
“The Germans have increased their number of troops, ditto the French, but we want to make sure there is a clear strategy, that it balances the economic, political and security and that it requires a fair effort from the whole of the international coalition.
Any question of more troops depends on what they would do and whether they were part of a genuinely comprehensive strategy. The most important thing to say is that the biggest source of new troops for the medium term is the Afghan national army, which I will be visiting later today.”
Asked about suggestions that 2,000 more British soldiers could be sent in, he said: “It is certainly invented as far as I’m concerned. I haven’t seen any papers come to me saying we need 2,000 more troops. The MoD organises these assessments of what’s needed in a very coherent, very systematic way and we are not going to do it on the basis of plucking numbers out of the air.”
Miliband said any civilian casualties in the conflict were “a real blow”. “When innocent civilians are killed, their brothers and sisters and neighbours ask: ‘What are you here for?’ The critical thing is that we hold our hands up when things go wrong and that we insist that the vast bulk of the security work being done by British and coalition troops is to protect this country not to attack it.”
Miliband will visit troops in Helmand province and speak to military and political leaders before moving on to Pakistan today for talks with President Asif Ali Zardari. He said they would discuss ways for Pakistan to work “in the closest way possible with the American authorities”, after controversy over US air strikes on its territory near the Afghan border.
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