US colluding with Daesh in Afghanistan: Karzai
Former President Hamid Karzai says the US is colluding with Daesh in Afghanistan and allowing the Takfiri group to flourish in the war-stricken country.
“In my view, under the full [US] presence, surveillance, military, political, intelligence, Daesh has emerged,” he told Qatar's Al Jazeera television in an interview.
“And for two years, the Afghan people came, cried loud about their suffering, of violations. Nothing was done,” he said.
The terrorist outfit began establishing a notable presence in Afghanistan almost a year after making sweeping land grabs in Iraq and Syria in 2014.
It has mostly been populating the eastern province of Nangarhar, from where it has carried out high-profile brutal attacks at major population centers in the Central Asian country.
Karzai said the US administration of President Donald Trump had also used Daesh as an excuse to drop a massive bomb on Afghanistan in April 2017.
Also known as “mother of all bombs” (MOAB), GBU-43, the largest non-nuclear bomb, which the US has used in combat, was dropped in the Achin District of the province.
“And the next day, Daesh takes the next district in Afghanistan,” Karzai said. “That proves to us that there is a hand in it and that hand can be no one else but them (the US) in Afghanistan,” he added.
Karzai condemned the attack as “inhuman and most brutal misuse” of Afghanistan as a “testing ground for new and dangerous weapons.”
He also welcomed a recent call by the International Criminal Court (ICC) chief prosecutor to investigate war crimes in Afghanistan.
“She’s right to launch such an investigation,” Karzai said, referring to ICC Chief Prosecutor Fatou Bensouda. He said he would help with any investigation, even into his own potential complicity.
The US, under Republican George W. Bush’s presidency, invaded Afghanistan on October 7, 2001. The offensive removed the Taliban regime from power, but violence never subsided in the country. The militants have made a resurgence and are now present in about half of the country.
After becoming president in 2008, Barack Obama, a Democrat, vowed to end the war but did not live up to his promise.
His successor Donald Trump also promised to scale back the US military involvement in Afghanistan but ever since his inauguration in January, the US president has ordered a deployment of thousands more troops to the war-torn country.
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