KABUL, Afghanistan — The Afghan president has ordered his defence minister to tell NATO that Afghan forces — and not the international troops — should be the one to carry out special operations and nighttime raids. Hamid Karzai's announcement on Saturday also says NATO should not proceed with any raids that have not been coordinated with Afghan forces. The move is meant to assuage rising popular anger over coalition searches and murderous nighttime raids of homes. NATO forces have faced violent protests over night raids on villages where they are trying to flush out insurgents.
It's unclear what immediate impact Karzai's statement will have. NATO and the US treat him with contempt as a general rule and are likely to ignore this move. NATO issued its usual weasel-worded statement saying the coalition understands it "must move from Afghan participation in night operations to Afghan forces having responsibility for night operations." This comes in a week when the principal US Military strategist, General Petraeus was severely criticised by a UK diplomat for the brutal black ops tactics (see earlier and post and here).
Karzai is not, and never ever has been his own man.
ReplyDeleteHe is still a puppet for his former oil corp. masters.
Agreed, domestic pandering with low prospect of results. U.S. will never give up on night-raids - they're the only real way of demonstrating "progress" to the U.S. public. Sir Sherard Cowper-Cole's hit this nail with Vietnam's body count.
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