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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of complex bilateral talks on a security pact on the role the United States would play after most of its troops are withdrawn by the end of 2014.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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Leave a Comment:
Is anybody crazy enough to believe that democracy, any kind of democracy, has a better
chance than a snowball in hell to be established in this thoroughly corrupt society?
Come on, think again!!! Let them cheat each other, grow their poppies and treat
their women like slaves. We will never be able to change any of this!
As soon as US and its allies leave Afghanistan, Taliban will quickly move in and take over(they all ready have people in the government and military just waiting(mark my words)). Karzai, his brother, and their cronies have all ready pillaged the US funds sent to the country to rebuild it(billions have been shipped to banks outside of Afghanistan) and they'll live very nicely on that money in palaces and expensive flats in places like Dubai, Qatar, United Arab Emirates, France, and Switzerland.
This guy is a corrupt, ignorant moron. He and his family have been stealing from us and the Afghan people for a decade (that we know of) and has no intention of making Afghanistan a stable country. Its time the warlords of the provinces, who rescued Afghanistan from the Russians, to put Karzai and his Taliban family out of business.
I throw my shoes in his face.
And its time for the US to s--t or get off the pot. We do not have the time, patience, or money to constantly rebuild that worthless country. Anything they do build is a waste of money, and falls apart in a year. And this is all on our dime, since their only revenue is opium.
10 yrs to train these crybabys!! are they that stupid. Karzai cant run a country so eliminate him. Pathetic bastards that cant do anything for themselves and born with a gun in their hand and never happy. Harry Truman would of nuked them by now.
Screw Afganistan! Pull our troops out and let what ever happens to them, happen. Sooner than later.
Amen to all that
Karsia is angry because he is not doing any more business with his crony George W. Bush, he is angry because president Obama is bringing our troops home, I wish every one of of soldiers come home and leave that country to fight the Talaban, don't leave any body there to train that people. Let the afghan people deal with their own problems and let them kill each other
Enough discussion, let's bring them home now!!! not in 2013 or 2014!!! tomorrow,period! This guy is a clown or afraid his corruption scheme will be over soon. I will bet as soon as we are gone the very next day he will be knocking on Putin's door to get their favors!!! He is a backstabber and an opportunist. I am done with him. Screw Afghanistan, by the way, forget about their air space too, once we leave just continue the drone attacks. He is ther because we put him there as a puppet.
Time to pickup our bombs and troops; let's go home. Karzai can fix his own nation - or not.
Lets pull out today. Our troops could use the break.
Oh! And the check is in the mail. Don't hold your breath waiting for the next couple of billion U.S, Tax dollars.
The U.S. Postal Service is having a little techicnal difficulty.
We'll be BACK.
We should just tell the Taliban, hey the whole country is yours to include the president position, we just need a week to get our boys home.
Wow, what a 'saying':
The story is a startling illustration of an adage popular with diplomats in Kabul, which goes: "It's not that the system is corrupt; it's that corruption is the system."
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/afghan-elite-plundered-900m-from-leading-bank-2200176.html
And this:
It's a meticulous account of the workings of kleptocracy, but from a Western perspective perhaps the most terrifying part of the tale is the motive. The businessmen, politicians and officials – the cream of Afghan society – are milking Afghanistan for all they can. Why? Because they don't believe their country has a future.
Hey, if 'they' don't believe their country has a future, then it is probably incumbent on us to agree with them and pull out all troops, financing, etc.
"However, he also acknowledged that much of the country's violence was caused by insurgent groups. "
Typically sensationalized NBC headline.
What does Karzai share in common with Obama? Both are lying sacks of Muslim sh^t, useless mouthpieces with no clue how to lead with integrity.
How about returning all the foreigners who died in your country to set it free. If the truth be know, you don't want it to be free. Tolerance and accepatance is not for the Taliban. They are the devil's religion as no God-fearing religion would condone the violence they show towards their own kind. While I am not an over religious person but I do know if evil were to come to this Earth, Taliban would be its name. Time to come home and let them kill themselves and I suspect the president of Afghanistan will be amongst those killed.
He is an idiot who only cares about pocketing the billions funneled into this country. No, we refused to increase your monthly allowance so you could but newer tribal flags!
how can we stop this NATO/US tyranny? It's completely out of control. Anybody read how the US is about to invade Syria?
Has life under Karzai improved.....no......and with a record number of Americans on food stamps shouldn't that be asked of Obama?
Oooopies Pooo......forgot this is MS/NBC no questions for Der Fuhrer, because more Americans are on food stamps due to a YouTube video.
it's a shame but i would never fight for this country...it's corrupt and it's people immoral.
There are many, many people who feel like you. You are not alone and one day this tyranny being spread throughout the world will meet it's match.
No one said Al Qaida was gone, just that it was weakened by taking out many of its top leaders. I don't think Al Qaida and the Taliban are one in the same but I may be wrong. I do think we should get out of there and if they don't want our security, good. We don't need to spend our money and lives protecting people who don't want our help. Karzai is known to be corrupt. We should not support him.
Enough is enough... Tell them to pay up for the trillion or so they owe us for fighting for them and if they wont pay, just take half the country that is worth the most. The hell with rag heads and their pig @!$%#ty religion Islam. Im tired of these third world countries @!$%#ting all over us when we are over there helping them, so pay up, or we take half the country.... Maybe we could use it for a grave yard when we go after the billions of Muslims that hate us. I dont think they would even make good fertilizer though
u need to wake up. We bring nothing but war to these people. Nothing but war, oh and then we take their resources. Wake up dude. Our country has turned to the dark side of the force.
Well like so many other liberal democrats you choose to ignore the fact that we were attacked on 9/11 and they flew planes into our twin towers and killed over 3000 people, and the people responsible were in Afghanistan. So thats why the @!$%# we are over there, but we are not fighting to win, so your correct, we need to get out, or win the war. I would like to see all our B52's start at one end of the country starting with the capital of this rag head country and carpet bomb the whole place. and then put out the notice that the next attack on this country will result in automatically releasing a nuclear war head on their capital or in the case of Muslims, we should start with Mecca. We dont need to commit more men, we need to use the nukes we have and get the job done correctly and efficiently.
Bush should have sent the troops in to level the place, kill bin laden and all of his followers.
I wasn't happy about Bush sending troops to Iraq with Afghanistan unresolved. Saddam Hussein deserved to die, and he wasn't going anywhere while the US had troops searching for bin laden.
Our troops are trained to destroy things and kill the enemy. they should NEVER be used as policemen in country where the majority of the people have a kindergarten education.
Stop the money and the stupidity. Give the money to our own people who earned it and paid taxes so this piece of crap can criticize us? Take all of the cronicly unemployed who refuse to move to go to work but insist on extensions so they can stare at the plant that will never reopen and send them over there to help pack up our @!$%# and get out. We have so many skilled jobs that Americans will not move to take because they can sit on there backside for 99 months and then when that runs out they can file for social security disability. Meanwhile we have to go over seas to bring in workers to train to take the jobs the Americans refuse to move for. The shipyard in Newport News, Virginia is trying to recruit 10,000 workers. These are good paying jobs with benefits. They can not fill the positions and are being forced to go over seas to recruit, meanwhile the people drawing unemployment refuse to move to take these good jobs. They should be either sent to Afganistan to help us move out or be forced to relocate where they can be gainfully employed.
Time to get out now - not 2014!
Okay. Let's leave then.
Right now.
Enough already w these scum bags,all they want is USA $'s. We (USA) need to stop trying to buy loyalties from these towel heads,that's why they have towels on their heads. They don't want us to see how brainless they r. Pull our people out of those hell wholes,stop sending our $,and let them fend for themselves. They've been at it since Jesus walked on the earth. He could not stop them,now what, we humans think we can???Please!!! Look at the results? Their Koran says if u can't convert ,the infidels must be killed. So adios devil worshipers! earth.........Karzi like all politicians is a power hungry ,money hungry SOB...