This crap has got to STOP!
May 22, 2005
Karzai Demands Justice for Prisoners Abused by Americans
By BRIAN KNOWLTON
International Herald Tribune
WASHINGTON, May 22 - President Hamid Karzai today demanded justice for Afghan prisoners abused by American interrogators, and he blamed the United States and Britain, not his government, for the slow progress of anti-drug efforts in his country.
He also said he would ask President Bush for greater control over Afghan affairs as part of a longer-term strategic partnership.
Asked if he had complained to the United States about the abuse - two Afghans in United States military custody in Bagram died in December 2002 after severe beatings - he replied: "We have before, I will do it again. This is simply, simply not acceptable, we are angry about this, we want justice, we want the people responsible for this sort of brutal behavior punished and tried."
But speaking a day before he is to meet here with Mr. Bush, Mr. Karzai also portrayed the prisoner abuse as rare and atypical, the work of only one or two American soldiers. He said, in a CNN interview, that this should not reflect on all Americans, adding, "There are bad people on duty everywhere."
Mr. Karzai underscored cooperation with the United States, but also insisted that Afghans' sense of independence and self-reliance was growing. "No Afghan is a puppet, you know," he said in a Fox News interview. "There is a stronger ownership of the Afghan government and the Afghan people now."
It remained unclear how much his criticisms were intended for Afghan consumption, or whether his meeting with Mr. Bush might be rendered less comfortable than past such encounters, which have generally been portrayed as relaxed and amicable.
His comments, nonetheless, came at a delicate and unexpectedly contentious moment, a day after Mr. Karzai had expressed dismay over reports of abuses of Afghan prisoners - "it has shocked me thoroughly," he said Saturday in Kabul - and as Mr. Karzai's help in eradicating opium poppies in Afghanistan was being questioned by the United States.
Coming at a time of rising insecurity in Afghanistan, this left a surprising array of tensions between the two sides. At least 17 people died in recent anti-American protests in Afghanistan and other countries that some accounts linked to a Newsweek report, since retracted, that United States interrogators at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, had desecrated the Koran.
"We were angry about that," Mr. Karzai said of the Newsweek report. But he suggested that the real target of the violent demonstrations was something else.
"It was directed at the peace process that we have of inviting back the thousands of the Taliban to come back to their country," he said. "It was actually against the elections in Afghanistan. So we know what was going on there." Parliamentary elections are due in autumn.
While generally praising cooperation between the United States and Afghanistan, Mr. Karzai also said it was time for American military officials to seek Afghan permission before raiding people's houses. A day earlier, in Kabul, he said he would ask Mr. Bush to release all Afghans in United States military detention to Afghan custody.
Frank differences over the poppy eradication program emerged over the weekend.
A cable sent May 13 by the United States Embassy in Kabul to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice asserted that eradication efforts were slipping partly because, "although President Karzai has been well aware of the difficulty in trying to implement an effective ground eradication program, he has been unwilling to assert strong leadership, even in his own province of Kandahar." [Related Article]
A copy of the memo was shown to The New York Times by an American official concerned by the pace of poppy eradication. The cable faulted Britain as well, which holds lead responsibility for counternarcotics work in Afghanistan.
Mr. Karzai asserted today that in regions where the Afghan government led eradication efforts, poppy fields had been substantially destroyed.
In other areas, he said, this "was supposed to be done by an agency, a department that was financed by the international community, by the United States, by Britain. The failure is theirs, not ours." International efforts, Mr. Karzai asserted, had been "ineffective, and delayed and half-hearted."
The international community had also done too little, he said, to provide Afghan farmers with alternative forms of livelihood.
But Mr. Karzai carefully balanced his criticisms with praise for cooperation between the United States and Afghanistan. "We are in a partnership with America, in a partnership that is very, very successful," he said. It was a collaboration that "drove terrorism away, that drove lots of bad guys away, that brought liberation to Afghanistan."
Those comments echoed the upbeat assessment by President Bush, in his regular Saturday radio address, when he uncritically praised advances in Afghanistan.
"On Monday, I will meet Afghan President Hamid Karzai at the White House to discuss freedom's remarkable progress in his nation," he said.
"We're helping Afghanistan's elected government solidify these democratic gains and deliver real change. A nation that once knew only the terror of the Taliban is now seeing a rebirth of freedom, and we will help them succeed."
nytimes.com |
