Afghanistan’s president has ordered US special forces to leave a strategic province as he seeks tighter control over Afghan militia, exacerbating tensions before the 2014 withdrawal of NATO troops. Hamid Karzai yesterday gave American special forces two weeks to pull out of Wardak, a hotbed of Taliban activity on the doorstep of Kabul, accusing Afghans they work with of torture and murder that has incited local hatred. NATO and the US military has said it will discuss the issue with Afghan officials and takes all allegations of misconduct seriously. “We’re looking at those allegations, we didn’t find any evidence and we will talk to our colleagues and Afghan partners to find a solution,” Brigadier General Gunter Katz, spokesman for the US-led NATO mission, told a news conference. Wardak is a deeply troubled flashpoint where a Chinook helicopter was shot down by the Taliban in August 2011, killing eight Afghans and 30 Americans, in the deadliest single incident for American troops in the entire war. Analysts said the order underscored Kabul’s growing distrust of international troops and their desire to control local militia, who are trained by the Americans but operate without government control in the war against the Taliban. Relations between Karzai and Washington have long been troubled, and with the bulk of NATO’s 100,000 combat soldiers due to leave and the Afghan president to step down next year, there is huge uncertainty about the future. “It appears to be an on-the-spot, emotional decision, based on a long-standing frustration that there are forces… Afghan and international, that are uncontrollable,” said Martine van Bijlert of the Afghanistan Analysts Network.
