Karzai, the puppet who has decided not to pretend to cooperate any more, is just as embarrassing to the U.S. as the ISI of Pakistan acknowledging they are in control of the Taliban. Karzai, who has said it was the U.S. and Europe and their media who invented and/or caused the election fraud last year, has freed from jail an official whose incarceration on charges of corruption the U.S. had arranged. Karzai  has declared plans to fold two U.S.-backed  anti-corruption units, designed to function out of the reach political influence, back into his cess-pool government so they won't fight corrruption. .....U.S. intelligence has known for years that the Pakistanis remain tight with the Taliban, and that Karzai will never be any good. In early 2010 the Pakistanis was claimed a newfound  commitment to square up and deal openly with the U.S. with respect to their engagement of the Taliban. Who ever believed it? And Karzai? His hostile reaction to exposure of election fraud sealed the issue last year. ...... Click here for NYT's article, also August 23, on the ISI and the Taliban.

 

NewYork Times

Karzai Admits Helping Free Aide Accused of Graft

 
August 23,  2010
By ERIC SCHMITT

 

WASHINGTON — President Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan acknowledged Sunday for the first time that he had personally intervened to free a top political aide who had been detained on graft charges by two American-backed Afghan anticorruption units.

The aide, Mohammed Zia Saleh, head of administration for Afghanistan’s National Security Council, was arrested in late July after investigators wiretapped Mr. Saleh apparently soliciting bribes from a money exchange operation.

Mr. Saleh was later released on the order of the attorney general’s office, a move many officials suspected Mr. Karzai was behind but one he did not acknowledge until Sunday.

Not only did he intervene, Mr. Karzai told ABC’s “This Week,” “I intervened very, very strongly.”

Mr. Karzai continued: “This man was taken out of his house in the middle of the night by 30 Kalashnikov-toting masked men in the name of Afghan law enforcement. This is exactly reminiscent of the days of the Soviet Union where people were taken away from their homes by armed people in the name of the state and thrown into obscure prisons and in some sort of kangaroo courts.”

The episode has threatened to open a new breach in the often contentious relationship between Mr. Karzai and the Obama administration, which has made fighting the endemic corruption in the Afghan government a major policy goal.

A commission convened by Mr. Karzai after Mr. Saleh’s arrest found that the graft investigators were violating the rights of those they detained, findings that many Western officials concluded were politically motivated.

Mr. Karzai said that on Monday he would announce new instructions for the two anticorruption units, the American-mentored Major Crimes Task Force and the Sensitive Investigative Unit. The units are self-contained, with their own lawyers, investigators, judges and detention centers, an approach aimed at insulating the agencies from political interference.

“Tomorrow I will be giving a new instruction to bring these two bodies in accordance to the Afghan laws and within the sovereignty of the Afghan state,” Mr. Karzai said.

In the interview on Sunday, he also forcefully defended his order to remove all private security contractors from Afghanistan by the end of the year, saying that they were “running a parallel security structure” in the country that was “looting and stealing from the Afghan people.”

Mr. Karzai said foreign embassies, aid organizations and diplomats traveling around the strife-torn country would still be allowed to hire private guards.

“But we will definitely not allow them to be on the roads, in the bazaars, in the streets, on the highways,” Mr. Karzai said. “We will not allow them to provide protection to supply lines. That is the job of the Afghan government and the Afghan police.”

American diplomats, generals and lawmakers have expressed support for the goal of phasing out the tens of thousands of private security contractors, domestic and foreign, who operate in Afghanistan. More than 26,000 private guards from 50 companies work for the United States government alone. But these officials say that Mr. Karzai’s timetable is too ambitious and that Afghanistan’s fledgling security services will be unable to fill the gap capably in just four months.

Mr. Karzai dismissed that criticism on Sunday, saying that the widespread reliance on private security contractors was stunting the growth of Afghan’s security forces, and siphoning off its best recruits with offers of higher wages.

“Their presence is preventing the growth and the development of the Afghan security forces, especially the police force,” Mr. Karzai said. “Why would an Afghan young man come to the police if he can get a job in a security firm, have a lot of leeway and without any discipline?”

Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, a leading Republican on the Armed Services Committee who has just returned from Afghanistan, called on Mr. Karzai to fulfill his commitments to improve security, fight corruption and combat the growing Taliban militancy.

“He’s got to be all in to win,” Mr. Graham said on CBS’s “Face the Nation.” “His government is not at war with the insurgency. They need to change their laws to allow us to detain people who are security threats. He needs to fight corruption.”

Mr. Graham put Mr. Karzai on notice, saying: “He’s capable of doing that, but I’m going to make sure from Congress’s point of view that we have benchmarks and measurements. It’s now time to put him to the test. It’s now time to put ourselves to the test because we’re running out of time here at home.”

Four Americans Killed

KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) — Four American service members were killed in fighting in eastern and southern Afghanistan on Sunday, and a former guerrilla leader who battled the Soviets decades ago was killed by a roadside bomb in the country’s north.

Three of the Americans died in insurgent attacks, and one was killed by a homemade bomb, NATO said.

Insurgents using a bomb detonated by remote control destroyed the vehicle in which the former guerrilla commander, Salaam Pahlawan, was traveling as he made his way Saturday to government offices in Faryab Province’s Al Mar District, said the provincial police commander, Khalil Andarbi.