Courage of conviction is a rare article of trade, which is one reason treachery is an established trade. I think too much is being read into his statement, he would be accountable and Hamid knows it well. Interim Afghan leader Hamid Karzai said his troops entered the Taliban's last bastion of Kandahar on Friday as militia fighters laid down their weapons and surrendered. The whole country has now fallen like house of cards. I would assume that a frontal assault of Kandahar may have taken far more lives and established a bloody feud and schism between the tribes that could have been destabilising for Karzai authority in the South. In strategy such compromises are possible as far as Omar wanted to live and not being killed upon capture, what he got was a nice little possibility of facing the 'Military courts now! My trust in reports of media on this whole thing is zero; they have been failing time and again by making wrong assumptions and perpetrating news satisfying their own hidden agendas.
They went for a compromised exit but Omar facing courts is in no doubt. I don't think that Hamid has the power to grant such amnesties without consultation with his 14 colleagues and US. He is a very able guy and bombing people like him will take US into a quagmire that US will never be able to extricate itself. That is what US did differently from USSR. Much as I hate them, it is people like Karzai, Musharraf who made this job as easy as it looked to all of us on the other side of divide. We need to have very cool approach as these people deal with snakes with kind of justice that is prevalent in that part of the world. Carrot and stick pays the best dividends, and so far US has been on the money. Hamid Karzai father was killed on direct orders of Mullah Omar in Quetta, the brothers and elders have a score to settle with Omar on a personal level, I will not be surprised that one day his body is discovered in some gutter of Kandahar.
In Tora bora ranges Afghan tribal fighters have captured a key hill in their bid to flush out Arab fighters of Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda movement holed up in caves in the eastern Tora Bora region. US warplanes continued pounding areas around Tora Bora and Melawa, south of the city of Jalalabad, in the White Mountains that border Pakistan. The white mountains wil be flushed, 25 million $ is too much of booty for his head, he will be certainly turned in which ever corner or hole he may be hiding. Again your argument about lack of courage or conviction to face justice is valid. Suicide and death in hiding is in my opinion cowardice. If he has entered Pakistan tribal areas he will be most vulnerable to a sell off to US, Ramzi knows it, Kansi never made it neither would Osama.
Strategic Afghan town of Spin Boldak has fallen. Afghan town of Spin Boldak between the Pakistani border and Kandahar, which up to now was under Taliban control, fell Friday morning at dawn. "My people have been entering the city. Some have already got there, some are on their way," Karzai stated. |
