Posts Tagged ‘Hamid Karzai’
Thanks to Wikicommons.
Since the chaos in Libya broke out it is easy to forget America’s still in up to its (name a body part) in another little place: the nation of Afghanistan.
This July, the US is handing over defense of parts of the nation fully to the Afghan government. Must mean things are going great right?
Not quite….
Reports are showing that the Taliban and even worse, Al Qaeda, is finding safe havens within Afghanistan as US troops left obscure valleys.
As David Axe reports from near the Pakistan border while accompanying an Army patrol
After three years without any coalition contact, the area has become an overt Taliban stronghold…
…With local Afghan troops still badly inexperienced and the surge of U.S. troops slated to end this summer, this border could quickly fall back into neglect.
So, okay, maybe the periphery of the nation is unstable but most of the country is fine right?
Well, as we reported earlier, stability is fleeting as the burning of Korans in the US triggered riots across Afghanistan.
Expert and resident of Afghanistan Tim Lynch suspects that these riots may have not been spontaneous as for the Talib.an
the Koran burning provided the perfect opportunity for an organization with motive, money and organization to whip a large crowd out of control.
Further aggravating the situation is America’s fraying relationship with Afghanistan’s President, Hamid Karzai. Years of insufficient funding, shifting strategies, and perceived coldness from Washington, Ahmed Rashid reports, has Karzai feeling
that he no longer trusted the United States, its representatives, or their advice.
This is a big problem Rashid notes as
the road out of the conflict runs through a close U.S.-Karzai relationship, whether either of them likes it or not, and today that relationship is imperiled to a degree that it never has been before.
Long story short don’t expect the ending of the Afghan conflict to be quick or clean. We’ve been there almost ten years and we’re suspecting we’ll be reporting on this conflict long into the future.
March is National Umbrella Month! Get your schedule in order with this super cute 3D umbrella calendar.
Trouble in the Ivory Coast.
Sorry’s not good enough for Afghanistan’s president Hamid Karzai.
Thanks to Wikicommons.
Some people are describing Afghanistan as a gigantic mess. Luckily for the USA, we have our good friend Hamid Karzai, the President of Afghanistan helping us out! Right? Uh…Well… shall we just say… our good friend Mr. Karzai… is not our good friend. …read more.
Thanks to Wikicommons.
Well I guess the African ski trip is out of the question. Mt. Kilimanjaro’s ice flees the heat and disappears.
Hats off to Afghanistan’s almost-fairly elected president. Obama congratulates Karzai on his second term.
America’s favorite partisan pastime? Does Major League Baseball favor the Yankees?
Thanks to Wikicommons.
As you read in Part 1…you did read Part 1 right?… US Democrazy took a look at what so-called experts (not us) think of Iraq’s future.
Well, we’ve got another issue where the experts are at odds. In fact, opinions are so divided on this issue that generals and diplomats have gotten themselves into some big time trouble.
So what is this issue? Well, we’ll spell it out for you:
A-F-G-H-A-N-I-S-T-A-N
Courtesy of WikiCommons
Pope plans party for pontificating protestants.
The Vatican wants anxious aggrieved Anglicans to join the Roman Catholic Church.
Karzai runs with the runoff… Afghan President Hamid Karzai accepted findings of widespread fraud in the elections and endorsed a runoff vote scheduled for Nov. 7.
Hell hath no fury… like this woman’s scorn.
Hey, you. Vote for me!
We at USDemocrazy will be the first to admit that keeping up with the news on the home front can be difficult. But, what can get even more overwhelming is keeping up with the news in the international realm!
Since the U.S. entered Afghanistan in October of 2001,we have heard a lot about how things are progressing there — or, more recently, regressing.
There has been a recent surge in violence related to impending elections to be held on August 20. (And it would appear that their electoral system is just as crazy as ours in the U.S.!)
Current president Hamid Karzai (pictured above) is up for re-election, along with a field of 30-plus other contenders.
While President Karzai is in the lead in the polls, he is still keen on campaigning around his country, and notably to the rural Baghlan province.
This is not like campaigning in the USA. There are many parts of the country that are dangerous for the Afghan President to venture.
Karzai went Baglan to garner the approval (some might say endorsement) of the religious leader of an important Shiite sect in the region, the Ismailis,. This leader, Mansoor Naderi, threw the rally in Karsai’s honor. Now, to get everyone to actually vote for him is a different question.
You think we have political scare tactics being used in the health care debate? That’s NOTHING compared to politics in Afghanistan.
The radicals in the insurgent group, The Taliban want to stop the upcoming election… by force. The are employing their violent ways to keep some polls closed. (And it’s working.)
Says ABC News:
Zakaria Barakzai, an official with the Afghan Election Commission, is warning that in some areas voting may be too dangerous.
“There’s a strong possibility that 93 polling stations will not be opened in 10 districts where the government doesn’t have control,” he said.
Yet despite these odds many Afghans are still excited about their opportunity to exercise their democratic rights in this war-torn country.
Women, strongly oppressed by the Taliban regime, have been braving the elements of hatred and violence to campaign for the seats in provincial chambers.
To boot, there’s even two women among the large field of presidential candidates. They are not only opposing Karzai, but also the likes of military men and vicious war lords.
Will these elections be free and fair? Remember what happened in Iran recently? According to the Wall Street Journal, the Electoral Complaints Commission has been founded to oversee truly democratic elections:
The commission, established in 2005, grew out of the experience of the 2004 Afghan presidential elections, when politicians complained that there was no independent body to deal with accusations of vote stealing and ballot stuffing.
And though the Telegraph is predicting a close election come August 20, the biggest question remains: How many of Afghanistan’s voting population will get out to vote? In hopes of gathering interest and courage for voting next week, Afghan pop star Farhad Darya is “rocking the vote” in order to influence mostly those in the younger set to flex their political muscle.
The results remain to be seen, and promise to be interesting and crucial, any way it comes out.
