Author: Associated Press
Publication: NDTV.com
Date: October 7, 2011
URL: http://www.ndtv.com/article/world/taliban-cant-move-finger-without-pakistan-karzai-139499?pfrom=home-otherstories
As the war in Afghanistan hit the 10-year
mark on Friday, President Hamid Karzai claimed the Taliban are being propped
up by neighboring Pakistan, saying the militants can't lift a finger without
the Pakistanis.
The war will only end when something is done
to rout insurgents from their sanctuaries across the border in Pakistan, Karzai
said in an interview with the BBC that aired on Friday, exactly 10 years after
the U.S. and its allies invaded Afghanistan on Oct. 7, 2001.
The invasion was aimed at toppling the hard-line
Taliban regime and punishing it for giving safe harbor to Al Qaeda, which
orchestrated the Sept. 11 attacks on the United States. Over the years, the
U.S.-led coalition became mired in a battle against insurgents who have been
weakened by international troops yet continue to plant bombs and stage suicide
attacks and assassinations of top Afghan figures.
"Definitely, the Taliban will not be
able to move a finger without Pakistani support," Karzai said. "The
fact is the Taliban were and are stationed, in terms of their political headquarters
and operational headquarters, in Pakistan. We all know that. The Pakistanis
know that. We know that."
Militant sanctuaries in Pakistan won't go
away unless the government of Pakistan cooperates with Afghanistan and the
international community finds an effective way to remove the hide-outs, he
said.
"We're not saying this in a manner of
accusation and reprimand," Karzai added, trying not to inflame already
strained relations between the two nations. "We are saying this in a
manner of a statement intended towards a solution of the problem."
Pakistan maintains it cut off ties to the
Taliban and other militants following the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan, but
Washington and Kabul say otherwise.
President Barack Obama said Thursday that
Pakistan was "hedging its bets" by maintaining ties to militant
groups trying to undermine the Afghan government. Obama also acknowledged
that the United States has not been able to persuade Pakistan that the U.S.
goals of a stable Afghanistan pose no threat to Pakistan.
Just-retired Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman
Adm. Mike Mullen went further, recently calling the Taliban-affiliated Haqqani
insurgent network a "veritable arm" of the Pakistani intelligence
agency. Mullen also alleged that Pakistani intelligence supported militants
who mounted a recent 20-hour rocket attack on the U.S. Embassy and NATO headquarters
in the capital, Kabul.
In the wide-ranging interview, Karzai candidly
said the Afghan government and international allies have failed to provide
security for the Afghan people. He also said that his government wants to
talk to the Taliban, but doesn't know where to contact legitimate representatives
of the insurgency.
Former Afghan President Burhanuddin Rabbani,
who was leading the government's U.S.-backed effort to talk peace with the
Taliban, was killed Sept. 20 by an assassin who claimed to be an emissary
from the Taliban. Upon meeting Rabbani, the killer detonated explosives he
had tucked into his turban - a deadly blast that dealt a major setback to
efforts to find a political resolution to the war.
The Afghan government with support from its
international allies has been making peace overtures to the Taliban for years.
But after Rabbani's death, Karzai shifted his policy, saying he was giving
up trying to talk to alleged Taliban envoys. He said Pakistan holds the only
key to making peace with insurgents and must do more to support reconciliation.
"We have not said we will not talk to
them (the Taliban)," Karzai said. "We've said we don't know who
to talk to.
"We're not dealing with an identifiable
individual as a representative of the Taliban, or a place that we can knock
on and say, 'Well, here we are. We want to talk to you.'"
"Until that place emerges - an address
and a representative - we will not be able to talk to the Taliban because
we don't know where to find them," he said.
The Taliban have not claimed responsibility
for Rabbani's death.
Asked what needs to be improved in Afghanistan,
Karzai acknowledged, "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. What we should do is provide better and
a more predictable environment of security to the Afghan citizens and in that,
the international community and the Afghan government definitely have failed."
Violence continued Friday with attacks on
at least three coalition posts in Paktika province near the Pakistan border.
A suicide bomber detonated a vehicle packed
with explosives near the entrance to Combat Outpost Margah, which had also
been hit with 22 rockets, according to an Associated Press reporter at the
scene. Combat Forward Operating Base Tillman was hit with a half-dozen rockets
and Forward Operating Base Boris was struck with two.
No deaths were reported among NATO service
members.
Separately, the U.S.-led coalition said Friday
that it is conducting an investigation to determine how a NATO service member
died in southern Afghanistan. NATO did not disclose any other details about
what led to the service member's death on Thursday.
So far this year, 458 NATO troops have been
killed in Afghanistan. The death is the fourth so far this month.
In the capital, former Afghan Attorney General
Abdul Jabar Sabet went missing Thursday afternoon after he was attacked by
two gunman, said Mohammad Zahir, the chief of criminal investigation for the
Kabul police.