Former president of Afghanistan Hamid Karzai said in an interview this week that the efforts by international troops to help Afghan security forces regain territory taken by the Taliban was in fact doing more harm than any good.
Speaking to the Guardian, Karzai said: “Those who ask foreign forces to bomb Afghanistan are not representing the Afghan people or their interests.”
This comes after a week of heavy fighting in southern Helmand province between the Taliban and Afghan forces.
Afghan commanders have repeatedly called for the U.S military to intensify its airstrikes against the Taliban in the province.
However, Karzai said they should not. “They are very wrong – they are terribly wrong,” the Guardian reported him as saying.
During his tenure as president, Karzai was strongly opposed to airstrikes and night raids.
This week Karzai said: “This denial of self-determination causes a lot of frustration and anger for the Afghan people, and that helps fuel conflict.”
Despite a heavy casualty toll in Helmand among Afghan troops, Karzai said the losses should be accepted as a consequence of Afghan forces fighting alone.
“If we cannot fight it ourselves, then we cannot ask a foreign force to come take it for us,” he said. “Those who take it have more ownership than we have.”
Karzai said foreign forces should either leave Afghanistan to deal with its own internal conflict, or focus on the Taliban’s foreign backers in Pakistan, whom Karzai blames equally for Afghanistan’s woes.
He went on to say: “I have asked the Afghan government not to ask the US for aerial bombings of our country.”
“This is chemicals thrown on the country every day. This is killing our fields, spreading disease, and not bringing an end to the war.”
“Nato has been here for 14 years,” he said, adding that foreign forces are fighting for the same districts as they were when they had 150,000 troops. “Are we better off? Do we have more security? No.
“It means something is wrong. The way things are done, it has been in vain for us.”http://www.tolonews.com/en/afghanistan/26577-us-airstrikes-undermining-afghan-security-karzai
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