3.6.2008 by CrniLabudovi.

SPIEGEL INTERVIEW WITH AFGHAN PRESIDENT HAMID KARZAI

‘I Wish I Had the Taliban as My Soldiers’

President Hamid Karzai has come under fire for not doing enough to stem corruption in Afghanistan. He speaks to SPIEGEL about the coalition forces’ ties with warlords, rumors about his family’s influence and why he believes dirty deals are sometimes necessary.

AP

Taliban militants are a resurgent force in Afghanistan.

SPIEGEL: Mr. President, much has been written about the failures of the international community in Afghanistan. But a good part of the so-called insurgency in the south and east of your country appears to have more to do with a protest movement against a bad government and corrupt elite. It doesn’t seem like much of an exaggeration to talk about a resurgence of the Taliban. Is it not true that many Afghans are only joining the Taliban because they don’t consider them to be corrupt? Hamid Karzai: I disagree. That is absolutely wrong.

SPIEGEL: Some Afghan people say that the president himself, who is appointing high-ranking officials in Kabul and in the provinces, is fueling the insurgency with these personnel decisions. Is that there any truth in that?

Karzai: Governance has improved immensely in Afghanistan. For the first time in six years, the Afghan budget has become transparent, there are no longer any secret funds. Before, the governors did whatever they wanted. Now there is a reporting requirement and there are former governors who were criminal or corrupt who are now in prison, like the former governor of Baghdis province. Of course the country needs more time, but the problems we have in the south and east are not because of bad governance.

SPIEGEL: Then what are the reasons for the difficult situation there?

Karzai: There is a lot of interference from abroad. The south part of the country has always been the center of the Taliban activity; they came from there. And there are also traces of the mujahedeen’s decades-long battle. These are all factors.

SPIEGEL: Some of your closest aides are suspected of stealing land, drug smuggling and having illegal militias, among them respected governors and police chiefs. Your attorney general, Abdul Jabar Sabet, just named a few of them, including the governor of Nangarhar. Why do you still protect these people?

DER SPIEGEL / Tina Hager / Agentur Focus

President Hamid Karzai in Kabul.

Karzai: I am not protecting anybody. We are trying to govern Afghanistan and bring peace and stability. I know about the problems with the police. The international community finally agreed after two years of very intense and angry negotiations that the police are a problem and in the middle of 2007 they began to work with us. The checkpoints on the roads, for example, were developed during the years of the Soviet invasion, a time when the country became lawless and each local commander set up his own checkpoint to collect money. SPIEGEL: During the Taliban times there were no checkpoints at all.

Karzai: That was the best aspect of the Taliban. They did a lot wrong, but they also did a few things right. I wish I had the Taliban as my soldiers. I wish they were serving me and not people in Pakistan or others. When we came back to Afghanistan, the international community brought back all those people who had turned away from the Taliban …

SPIEGEL: … you mean the brutal commanders who fought in the civil war …

Karzai: … who then became partners with the foreign allies and are still paid by them today for their support. It is not always easy for me to find a way that can enable Afghanistan’s administration to function.

SPIEGEL: Dirty deals are still necessary for the stability of Afghanistan?

Karzai: Absolutely necessary, because we lack the power to solve these problems in other ways. What do you want? War? Let me give you an example. We wanted to arrest a really terrible warlord, but we couldn’t do it because he is being protected by a particular country. We found out that he was being paid $30,000 a month to stay on his good side. They even used his soldiers as guards …

SPIEGEL: That sounds like the story of Commander Nasir Mohammed in Badakhshan, a province where German soldiers are based.

Karzai: I don’t want to name the country because it will hurt a close friend and ally. But there are also many other countries who contract the Afghan militias and their leaders. So I can only work where I can act, and I must always calculate what will happen before doing anything.

SPIEGEL: There is a list of high-level drug lords and smugglers, and a number of well-known figures in the establishment. Some are your advisors and some are even alleged to be part of your cabinet. Why haven’t we seen the trial of a single prominent person?

Karzai: This list is a myth. I have never received such a list. I have asked the international community to deliver this supposed list to me, but it has never been presented.

SPIEGEL: Your former interior minister, Ali Ahmad Jalali, claimed to possess such a list.

Karzai: Then you would have to look for that in the archive of the Interior Ministry. It is also incorrect what you say: A lot of drug smugglers have been taken to court. Why are you quoting Mr. Jalalai as having this list?

SPIEGEL: Because he once publicly stated he did. Are you doubting his credibility because he was one of the ministers who became entangled in a corruption scandal surrounding the appropriation of land for construction in Kabul?

Karsai: Some members of the international community are strongly connected to corrupt elements and use them as their sources. Let me tell you about another case: One of our allies in the coalition gave a commander in another part of the country land and money for his loyalty. Should I bring him to trial? Should I bring Mr. Jalali to trial?

SPIEGEL: Why not?

Karzai: You cannot expect us to punish an Afghan who has lived his whole life in this country, who has suffered, sacrificed his family, given blood for this country, for having committed a little crime or a little corruption. And then the person who had long been away and first came back with the international community and loots the country can get away with it? This cannot be allowed to happen.

SPIEGEL: Since you became president, your family has become highly successful in the business world and also in politics. Your brother Mahmoud Karzai is currently CEO of a cement plant in Pul-i-Khumri in the northeast that was the envy of many competitors. Two other brothers, Qayum and Ahmed Wali, are powerful politicians in the southern part of the country. Many there say that no decisions can be made without the approval of the Karzais. Is there a grain of truth to that?

Karzai: This is really a lot of rubbish. Ahmed Wali has been accused of drug dealing. I have thoroughly investigated all these accusations, and of course none of them are true. Mahmoud was a businessman for a number of years in the United States, he even has an American passport. He was very successful there and made a lot of money. He returned when the US came to Afghanistan. Now he has become the CEO of a factory and there is nothing wrong with that.

SPIEGEL: He is also the head of a large group of investors that is doing big business in Afghanistan. Is it helpful to be a close relative of the president?…………..

Spiegel

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3.6.2008 by CrniLabudovi.

August 2, 2007

Bosnia Plans to Expel Arabs Who Fought in Its War

By NICHOLAS WOOD

SARAJEVO, Bosnia and Herzegovina — When Fadhil Hamdani first came to Bosnia from Iraq in 1979 he had no idea he would stay so long. But after prolonged studies, marriage to a Bosnian woman, the birth of five children and citizenship, the years turned into decades.

Now he says he feels more Bosnian than Iraqi.

But the Bosnian government does not agree. It views him as a threat to national security and is putting Mr. Hamdani and other foreign fighters who have lived in Bosnia for many years on notice of deportation.

Arabs, the largest group among hundreds of foreign fighters, fought alongside the Bosnian Muslim Army during the war here, from 1992 to 1995, against Serbs and Croats. In return, they were given Bosnian citizenship.

Most left after the war, which tore apart Muslim, Serbian and Croatian communities and cost around 100,000 lives. But a number stayed on and settled down.

Bosnian officials say their policies are merely reversing decisions that were illegally made at the war’s end. But Bosnian politicians and international officials say that the reversals are primarily motivated by a broader concern: that Bosnia should not be seen as a haven for Islamic militants.

Western officials and local politicians, mostly the Muslims’ former opponents, have accused the former fighters of promoting radical Islam and damaging Bosnia’s reputation in the process.

“Some of their structures have been very active in promoting radical activities in the form of Wahhabism,” said Dragan Mektic, Bosnia’s deputy security minister, in a recent interview, referring to a strict form of Islam. “The public feel endangered.”

Western governments have been encouraging the move.

Miroslav Lajcak, a Slovak diplomat who is the high representative of the international community in Bosnia and the senior international official here, has increased pressure on the government to move ahead with the deportations. So far, only two former combatants have actually been expelled, both last year.

“The presence of foreign fighters isn’t particularly useful for building a modern democratic state,” said a Western diplomat closely involved with the review, who spoke on the customary diplomatic condition of anonymity.

While many former fighters who stayed have managed to fit into Bosnian society, others stand out. Imad al-Hussein, a former medical student from Syria with a thick beard, became the public face of the Muslim fighters, or mujahedeen, after the war. He is one of six former fighters the government wants to expel first. The government has not publicly outlined its case against him.

His views do lie outside the norms of most Muslims here. For instance, he says that suicide bombings are justifiable but only within Israel. He said in a long interview that he and his former comrades had always acted within the law in Bosnia. But in response to the threat of being removed from his family’s home by force, he said: “I keep asking myself, will I be able to contain my instincts. If you defend yourself on your doorstep you become a martyr. And that is a great temptation.”

Other veterans are tensely biding their time, and they contend that there is nothing to connect them to any form of illegal activity. “If there was any evidence against us, then why have they let 12 years pass without prosecuting us,” said Raffaq Jalili, a Moroccan wounded in the war.

Bosnia is still recuperating from the war, and international officials who play a large role here are working to resolve stark differences among the Muslim, Serbian and Croatian populations. The high representative — currently Mr. Lajcak — still has the power to make laws and fire local politicians.

Both Saudi Arabia and the United States say that Islamic extremists have used Bosnian passports to travel between the Middle East and Europe; some Bosnian government officials say that has been impossible to confirm.

Western intelligence services and their Bosnian counterparts also claim they have uncovered two major plots in the past six years by Islamic extremists in Bosnia to attack Western targets.

In October 2001, six Algerians were arrested by the Bosnian police and later were sent to prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. In 2005, a Swedish man of Bosnian heritage and a Turk who had lived in Denmark were accused of possessing explosives and vests for making a suicide bomb. They were convicted and sentenced to prison in January.

It is not known how many foreign fighters remain in Bosnia — estimates vary wildly from more than a dozen to several hundred. The government says that a commission reviewed a list of more than 1,000 names and has revoked citizenship for about 420 people so far. Mr. Hamdani was the first to be notified by the commission, a year ago.

From 1996 to 2001, many of the former fighters occupied Bocinja, which had been a Serbian village in central Bosnia. The fighters lived there under Islamic Shariah law until they were evicted by the government, and they dispersed throughout central Bosnia.

Mr. Hamdani came to Bosnia when he was 18 and studied engineering in Zenica. By the time the conflict in Bosnia broke out in 1992, he was married and had two children.

It was only natural to fight for his adopted country, he said, as Bosnian Serb forces, backed by neighboring Serbia, attacked Muslims across the country. In February 1995, nine months before the end of the war, he was granted citizenship…………….

http://www.nytimes.com/

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