Karzai takes one last swipe at US

Karzai takes one last swipe at US

FPJ BureauUpdated: Saturday, June 01, 2019, 08:19 AM IST
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Kabul : Outgoing Afghan President Hamid Karzai used his farewell speech today to take one last swipe at the United States, capping a long-testy relationship with the accusation that America hasn’t wanted peace in Afghanistan.

  The only president Afghanistan has known since the 2001 US-led invasion said the United States wanted war in Afghanistan “because of its own interests.” Karzai’s relationship with the US has grown increasingly fragile in recent years, but the US-Afghan relationship may get a reset yesterday, when President-elect Ashraf Ghani Ahmadzai will be sworn in.

The United States has spent more than $100 billion on aid in Afghanistan since 2001 to train and equip the country’s security forces, to pave crumbling dirt roads, to upgrade hospitals and to build schools. But Karzai in his speech thanked a slew of countries for their help India, Japan, China, Iran, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, South Korea and Germany without mentioning the US.

The speech fingered the US and the military leaders of neighbouring Pakistan as the powers backing perpetual war.

“If America and Pakistan really want it, peace will come to Afghanistan,” Karzai said. “War in Afghanistan is based on the aims of foreigners. The war in Afghanistan is to the benefit of foreigners. But Afghans on both sides are the sacrificial lambs and victims of this war.” More than 2,200 US forces have died in Afghanistan operations since 2001.

Nearly 20,000 have been wounded. The United Nations says that some 8,000 Afghan civilians have been killed in the conflict over the last five years alone.

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