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Subscribe to RSSWatch Atia Abawi's full, exclusive interview with Afghanistan's President Hamid Karzai in which he discusses the "growing perception" that insecurity in the region is caused by the United States and some of its allies who "promoted lawlessness" and "corruption" in Afghanistan.
Updated at 9:43 a.m. ET: KABUL, Afghanistan - Afghan President Hamid Karzai sharply criticized the United States in an exclusive interview with NBC News on Thursday, blaming American and NATO forces for some of the growing insecurity in his country.
"Part of the insecurity is coming to us from the structures that NATO and America created in Afghanistan," Karzai said during a one-on-one interview at the presidential palace. However, he also acknowledged that much of the country's violence was caused by insurgent groups.
The Taliban are regaining land and power lost after they were toppled by U.S.-backed forces in 2001. Meanwhile, Karzai has gone from being a favorite of Washington under the presidency of George W. Bush, to a thorn in the White House's side with his criticism of American night raids and mounting civilian casualties at the hands of NATO troops. Many in Washington have also grown weary of Karzai, viewing him as ineffective and presiding over a deeply corrupt government.
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Karzai, who is serving his second five-year term, also told NBC News that he had sent a letter to President Barack Obama saying that Afghanistan would not sign any new security agreements with the United States until hundreds of prisoners held in U.S. custody were transferred to Afghan authorities.
His criticism of the United States, Afghanistan's most important ally, has come after the start of complex bilateral talks on a security pact on the role the United States would play after most of its troops are withdrawn by the end of 2014.
Karzai said the inmates in American detention in Afghanistan were being held in breach of an agreement he and Obama signed in March and must be handed over immediately.
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More than ten years after the beginning of the war, Afghanistan faces external pressure to reform as well as ongoing internal conflicts.
"We signed the strategic partnership agreement with the expectation and the hope ... the nature of the United States' activities in Afghanistan will change," Karzai said. But American behavior had not changed, he said, adding that terrorism would not be defeated "by attacking Afghan villages and Afghan homes."
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The dispute between the two countries centers around Bagram Air Base and a nearby detention facility, which have long been seen as a symbol of American impunity and disrespect by many Afghans.
"I have written to President Obama that the Afghan people will not allow its government to enter into a security agreement, while the United States continues to violate Afghan sovereignty and Afghan loss," he said.
Afghanistan President Hamid Karzai had harsh words for the U.S. during an exclusive interview with NBC's Atia Abawi.
During the interview, Karzai also said that he didn't think al-Qaida "has a presence in Afghanistan."
He added: "I don’t even know if al-Qaida exists as an organization as it is being spoken about. So all we know is that we have insecurity."
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In the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, the United States led the invasion to topple the Taliban, which was harboring al-Qaida and its then-leader, Osama bin Laden. While weakened, especially after the death of bin Laden at the hands of U.S. special forces in Pakistan in 2011, al-Qaida is still thought to have strong links with the Taliban and other Afghan insurgents.
Karzai said Afghans were thankful to foreign forces for being "liberated" in 2001, but complained that since then his countrymen had suffered the most in the fight against extremism.
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"In the name of the war on terror the Afghan people have paid the greatest price of any. That has not been recognized," he said.
While there have been more than 2,000 American military casualties since the invasion of Afghanistan, civilians have borne the brunt of the violence. In the first six months of 2012 alone, more than 3,000 civilians were killed or injured, according the United Nations. This number was down 15 percent from a year earlier. Anti-government and coalition insurgents were responsible for 80 percent of the civilian casualties, the U.N. says.
Karzai also addressed the issue of graft during the interview, saying there was "no doubt that there is corruption in Afghanistan."
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In an exclusive interview with NBC's Atia Abawi, Afghanistan's President Hamid Karzai says that the U.S. is not sticking to a signed agreement between their two countries.
"The bigger corruption is the corruption in contracts," he added. "The contracts are not issued by the Afghan government. The contracts are issued by the international community, mainly by the United States."
In 2010, the country received $6.4 billion in official development assistance, representing more than 40 percent of its gross domestic product, according to humanitarian news site AlertNet. Two-thirds of the funds aren't channeled through the government because of concerns about corruption and the government's ability to use the money properly, AlertNet added.
Afghanistan is tied with Somalia and North Korea at the bottom of Transparency International’s Corruption Perception Index 2012. A 2012 United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime report estimated that Afghans paid $2.5 billion in bribes over 12 months, which is equivalent to almost a quarter of the country’s GDP.
Kevin Frayer / AP
In southern Afghanistan, the focus of the U.S. war effort, nearly all the Afghan soldiers are foreigners too. Photographer Kevin Frayer shows these soldiers in a series of portraits.
The international community had fostered graft to keep the Afghan state weak, Karzai said.
"I've come to believe (that) ... corruption comes from the United States through contracts and through the corruption in both systems," he said, adding that the "perception of corruption is deliberate to render the Afghan government exploitable, to weaken it," he said. "This is something that I have began to believe in firmly now after the experiences that I've gained in ... working on this issue."
NBC News' F. Brinley Bruton and Kiko Itasaka contributed to this report.
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Karzai is right. It is our fault for supporting a two faced oil executive. That's right. Karzai worked for UNOCAL to get the pipeline put through to India. He is basically the king of Kabul and nothing else. The history of his government is nothing but corruption and kissing the proper a**.
Our CIA create the mess with Karzi just like they created the mess with Saddam Hussein and deposed the elected secular President of Iran to put the Shah into power and caused the mess in Iran. Just like they conned us into going into Vietnam.
As Pogo said, "We have met the enemy and he is us."
Karzai is a total dirtbag. he was put in power by Bush and his cronies, Rumsfeld and Cheney. He takes US aid dollars (your money) and gives it to the Taliban, so they stay in the Tribal zone, and don't come into Downtown Kabul, and KILL HIS ASS! Its called "protection money" He knows the day he stops paying the Taliban with the US dollar, he is a dead man. WTF are we thinking? When GWB left office four years ago, the US should have pulled every dollar, every soldier the hell out of Afghanistan. They're not nuclear armed..They can keep thier Taliban, and live under thier rule. Who cares. Put up the fence, watch what they are doing, drone the A-holes when the set up camps, and let em rot. WTF are we doing with this guy? we pay him, and he insults us constantly. Leave him for his Taliban buddies. They will kill him in a day..for sure.
We are better off dealing directly with the Taliban. Why use the useless middle-man Karzai.
I just wish there was some snappy line that would make everyone laugh, but we are past quippy jokes or witty retorts. We're locked in a slow grinding lost cause, too invested to just leave (no matter how much we'd like to), and too discouraged to commit further. It's psychologically like Vietnam. We can't win (only the Afghans can do that) and we don't want to lose, specially not to these guys.
But no matter how much we want to win, this is one of those wars we can't win, not fighting the way we are now. We don't have the desire to fight the way this war has to be fought to win it and we aren't callous enough to just leave those who bought into the "New Afghanistan" behind to face the return of the Taliban (and believe me, the Taliban will not be "nice guys" when they return, they have an ax to grind).
We can't even count on having learned a lesson from all of this...Africa will be the next hot spot...another chance to re-experience this all over again.
Just how long is it going to take the GOP cupcakes to realize they lost the election...and that bashing Obama for making water wet does nothing more than expose them as (ignorant) racist.
Unless someone disarms the insurgents, eliminates Afghanistan as a safe haven for global terror, and stops the heroin trade, Afghanistan is still going to be a global cultural cesspool
To do so requires that the insurgents be routed out, the borders sealed to prevent both weapons and drug smuggling, all Afghan including its army be disarmed until they can be trusted, and the heroin crop burned so that it isn't used to fund terrorism or the Russian mob. (Heroin addiction is now a bigger problem in Russia than alcoholism.)
Solving that Afghan problem is going to take about 250,000 soldiers, a lot more money than the US has available, and a better logistical position than we have being 12,000 miles away.
The county that has the proximity, the resources, the cultural skills to properly deal with an insurgency, and the engineering skill to turn the Afghan economy from being dependent on heroin from SE Afghanistan to rare-earth mining in NE Afghanistan is their next-door neighbor China.
We need to turn Afghanistan over to a 250,000 UN Sanctioned Peace Keeping force from China. Is not only is a solution towards world peace, it is the only solution.
Besides, we outsource everything else to China. Why not outsource this war? And since China won the war in Vietnam, its time they won a war for us.
I've yet to fully understand how any country could accept & trust anything originating from the United States, including its foreign-aid.
Let's McDonald's-ize the world, is the rallying cry of the USA. Personal & Political Greed... Exploitation of natural resources... Graft... Immorality under the guise of Women's Rights... Class-ism... Racism... that's the only thing countries like Afghanistan will get from cooperating with the USA.
Let's raise the taxes on the American people so we can keep sending boatloads of our cash to these ungrateful bastards. It's way past time we get of of there and leave these idiots to do what they know how to do best.....what ever that is.
BOOBYE! 12 YEARS AND ALL THE AMERICAN BLOOD SPILLED FOR THIS BACKWARD COUNTRY. Let them languish in mediocrity and corruption and killing. OBL is dead---mission really accomplished (and the POTUS didn't have to land on a carrier!)
BTW: they will soon bowl with human heads once the US leaves! Maybe Karzai's.