Kabul, October 26: As Afghan President Hamid Karzai is waiting for a second round of votes, he has blamed the US and Western countries for the eight-year-old conflict in his country.
“Is the United States a reliable partner with Afghanistan? Is the West a reliable partner with Afghanistan?” Karzai said in an interview with CNN on Sunday.
“Have we received the commitments that we were given? Have we been treated like a partner?” he added, challenging the true meaning of partnership.
After the first round of the presidential election in August, the Electoral Complaints Commission (ECC) discarded up to 1.3 million votes as fraudulent.
When Karzai’s votes came down to the 50 percent required for outright victory, he agreed to a run-off vote set for November 7.
Karzai said a partnership to him was “where Afghan lives are respected, where Afghan property is respected, where the Afghan traditions are respected, where we know the direction we are moving toward.”
The Afghan president has repeatedly questioned efficiency of international troops in dealing with the Taliban in his country during the long notorious war.
He has been critical of high numbers of civilian deaths in US air strikes and President Barack Obama’s unresolved review of US strategy for the eastern country.
In a daring revelation, Karzai earlier claimed that based on unconfirmed reports, unknown army helicopters have been taking gunmen to northern provinces overnight for about five months.
Later, diplomats, speaking on condition of anonymity, told that the British army has been relocating Taliban insurgents from southern Afghanistan to the north by providing transportation means.
Since the US-led invasion of Afghanistan in 2001, the country has been the scene of a bloodbath of ordinary destitute Afghans as well as international troops.
Washington invaded Afghanistan under the pretext of killing or capturing those who attacked the World Trade Centre in September 11, 2001. The US says the mission that has been pursued with a number of other powerful nations, has so far failed to kill or arrest the main militant commanders.
—–Agencies