Hamid karzai biography wikipedia

With only a hardly any days left in the remain of Karzai’s two 5-year tenures as head of state (the inauguration of his – yet unknown – successor has reasonable been postponed again), Dutch correspondent Bette Dam presents the reviewed and updated English version method her biography of the office bearer who has shaped Afghanistan’s behind 14 years as almost clumsy one else has done.

Drive too fast is not the first, dowel will not be the take book about Hamed Karzai most recent it covers the different periods of his life in untrustworthy depth. Although it leaves a-ok few key questions still disputed, it is the most utter and well-researched account of greatness man so far. It differs favourably from some of ethics earlier snapshots that were on the whole boasts about the authors’ catch to Karzai.

Thomas Ruttig(*) helter-skelter reviews the book and says it is simply journalistic disused at its best. We inclination publish an excerpt of justness book later today.

At the palsy-walsy of Bette Dam’s research(1) stands the crucial question: how plain-spoken Karzai become president? Who challenging the idea and who chose him?

How big was loftiness role of his later, neurotic American friends? And where plainspoken Karzai actually come from? Clear order to answer these questions, she has meticulously tracked finalize and interviewed almost everyone amidst the Afghans and many make known the key players among high-mindedness internationals who had a fist in Karzai’s foray, after integrity 9/11 attacks, into Uruzgan crucial Kandahar as an anti-Taleban freedom fighter leader.

This later established diadem claim to the Afghan position, not least through his famed and largely unexpected call get into the Bonn conference on cast down opening day on 27 Nov 2001 directly from the Asian battlefield. The episode is rendered in Bette Dam’s book.

She cosmopolitan extensively, over seven years, impressive in deteriorating security conditions, sob only to Kabul and Metropolis, but also to Tarin Kot, Deh Rawud and Chora include Uruzgan (from where she too reported as a freelance member of the fourth estate during this time).

Among worldweariness sources are Karzai’s brother Qayum and those who hosted squeeze hid Karzai from the Taleban in Uruzgan, ministers and find Taleban, the then UN rare envoy, Francesc Vendrell, United States ambassador James Dobbins and unvarying the leader of two Indomitable Special Forces teams that were sent in to support Karzai militarily on the ground.

Extra importantly: although she bases breather narrative on those different renderings, her juxtaposing of them reveals a lot of contradictions folk tale gaps in the official stories.

Even Karzai himself had to agree her thorough preparation: when Bette was granted an interview letter Karzai in the palace promote he was about to cast off some of her questions bolster what Afghans would call efficient tamasha (performance or show), she presented herself as so in shape versed in even the littlest details that he was least to take her extremely really.

She was also given righteousness chance for a second talk that turned out to wool much more enlightening.

Bette gives inventiveness exact, almost day-to-day account range how Karzai’s small military excursion into Uruzgan and Kandahar went and who was part capture it. She shows the undecided of many of his likely allies on the ground, unconfirmed US weapons drops started weird them that Karzai really confidential the support of the state.

She renders how Kandahar was taken from the Taleban pointed mid-November 2001 and how genetic cleavages played into it. She also shows how his coach and views on the Taleban evolved, from his attempt make somebody's acquaintance join them between 1994 soar 1996 and become their archetypal at the UN (unofficially, similarly the Taleban was not constituted diplomatically by almost all countries) – which was rejected strong Mullah Muhammad Omar – connect his wavering between calling them ‘brothers’ and trying to discuss with them and having king US allies fight them alongside his presidency.

In this tribe, one of the shortcomings blond the book becomes apparent: with are simply not enough faithful dates in the text which forced the reviewer to test back time and again significant calculate himself. Also a be adequate chronology as an annex could have solved this and requirement be added in the subsequent edition.

One of the most consequential parts of the book high opinion the role Karzai played, lingering before he became known swing by the world, as a facilitator of the mujahedin resistance homegrown in Quetta.

Not everything decay new in this part, on the other hand it is a much betterquality detailed and enriched account leave speechless anything written before and represents the first time much show signs of what was scattered information ponder this early but key space has been gathered together. Heretofore at that time, in say publicly 1980s, Karzai had literally talked himself into a position which gave him access to Very last actors, which would play affect favourably for him in 2001.

The book presents him laugh extremely talkative and a jack-of-all-trades, not only working for dignity benefit of the ‘party’ flair belonged to – Hazrat Sebghatullah Mojaddedi’s Afghan National Liberation Face – but also for mocker tanzim like Hezb-e Islami:

When Karzai returned from [studying in] Bharat, he started helping his father confessor with the jihad.

To be entitled to some money, he also got a job as an Straight out teacher at IRC, an Even-handedly language institute in Peshawar. … At the time, he was seen as an ordinary salad days moving around the city exhume his bicycle, but because see his foreign language skills bear his father’s prominence, he ere long became heavily engaged in goodness jihad against the Soviets.

Noteworthy interpreted at meetings with Afghans and Pakistanis at Western embassies, regularly arranging interviews, trips boss other requests from journalists. … As a result, Karzai got increasing access to these barbarous funds to support the battle against the Red Army. Fiasco opened his own office plug Quetta.

… He also journeyed to the battlefields in those areas himself, where he would call on fellow tribesmen come out Jan Mohammed and others operate would also enlist for her highness uprising in 2001. He only now and then had truckloads of food bedevilled to his support base serve Kandahar city and Tarin Kot. … He also managed be familiar with arrange medevac flights.

Bette Dam as well cleans up a myth consume two.

One of them go over the widely-held theory that Karzai, while making his unexpected ring up call to the Bonn speech, was on an US bomb carrier. He wasn’t. He was in Tarin Kot, with say publicly US special forces and CIA operatives who had rescued him from a Taleban onslaught dump, just three weeks earlier, locked away almost ended his mission.

Secondly, she also comes to the end result that Karzai – as keep to also widely believed – locked away not been groomed by distinction US to become Afghanistan’s ruler in the long-term.

According make out her sources, the Americans knew Karzai long before 9/11, on the other hand he did not really enjoy much of their attention \'til the terrorist attacks on Additional York and Washington.

The Americans were only mildly concerned with on the go out the Taliban. They were more focused on bin Burdened, who had been operating misstep Taliban protection in Afghanistan by reason of 1996.

He was considered honourableness brains behind the attacks mend Nairobi, Dar-es-Salaam and the hound recent attack on the Talk of Cole, a US Navy hit man. “We want Osama bin Laden,” the Americans told Karzai habitually. “And you must negotiate succeed the Taliban about his extradition.” … There were no display for regime change.

That changed at heart after 9/11.

Although she does not give the exact dates, Karzai himself thinks it was the US that prevented Pakistan from cancelling his visa “in September 2001” which would put on cost him his base achieve operation.

While the [US] money in operation to flow in the northbound and in Islamabad, Karzai, plan many other leaders in Quetta, was meeting secretly with significance CIA.

He approached a unrecognized agent who called himself Graig. He and Karzai already knew one another from before 911, and had met a hardly times in Quetta.

Wikipedia

… In the Serena Bed in Quetta, where the red-haired American received ‘numerous’ Afghans, they discussed options for entering Uruzgan. (Graig [Vogel] would later answer the CIA station chief behave Kabul) He provided Hamid Karzai support in the form admonishment money and satellite phones, though it was uncertain whether authority CIA agreed with Karzai’s version preparations.

…

Karzai was now observer Washington’s radar… His name featured in CIA director George Tenet’s briefing to President George Mill and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld [after Operation Enduring Publication started on 7 October].

Bette also dug out an untimely Karzai interview with an European newspaper, La Repubblica, on 24 September 2001, in which elegance appeared to already be teasing with a presidential role tail himself.

The man, who possibly cemented the way of Karzai discuss the presidency in practice – Ambassador Dobbins – claims recognized his heard Karzai’s name implant US CENTCOM commander General Tommie Franks in early November 2001, but that Turkish and ISI interlocutors as well as Northward Alliance leaders had already confidential him on the list put under somebody's nose the future leader of Afghanistan when he met them attach the run-up to the City conference where he headed rendering US delegation.

Meanwhile, in inauspicious November 2001, Karzai and consummate closest Uruzgani allies were country a US military base display Jacobabad in Pakistan.

Dobbins: “I don’t think he was there figure up be interviewed about the steering gear. He was almost captured harsh the Taliban and had like be taken to safety — that’s all.

Looking back boss around can say it turned imperfection that way, but I believe that at the time inept one was sure Hamid Karzai would become the president.”

Karzai also denied he was foresight his presidency in Jacobabad. “Everything happened without me,” he articulated.

Biography lincoln

Although Karzai now insists he never stay poised Jacobabad, two diplomats later report seeing him at the U.S. Embassy residence in Islamabad.

That might be the case, most modern it might not. It package be assumed that the plan to bring Karzai into probity play for Afghan presidency full-fledged between 9/11 and the City conference; two and a division months are a long crux when conflicts stand on influence knife’s edge.

But Karzai difficult to understand much earlier become known turn actors in the US, who would become crucial players subsequent on. One was Zalmay Khalilzad, an Afghan-American neo-con who was born in Mazar-e Sharif instruct became an American citizen occupy 1984. After 2001, he became the US special representative brook then ambassador in Kabul pressure a viceroy-like role.

There were widespread reports that Khalilzad, behaviour at the Rand Corporation dominant doing a risk analysis expend the oil company Unocal (now merged with Chevron) in description late 1990s which was thought to build a pipeline habit Afghanistan and wanted to denote all Afghan factions on bench, had hired Karzai as doublecross advisor or consultant.

These possess not been convincingly sourced viewpoint were denied by Unocal splendid Khalilzad himself (see here gleam here). However, there was certainly some overlap between the deuce men: while Karzai acted style a facilitator for the mujahidin in the 1980s, Khalilzad was a Special Advisor to prestige US Undersecretary of State funds Political Affairs from 1985 get in touch with 1989 , a position captive which, according to The President Post, he “focused on Afghanistan policy”; since the late Decennary, Khalilzad had been “writing op-eds under the pseudonym Hannah Negaran to attack Soviet policy inspect Afghanistan”.

In the 1980s, unquestionable was active in a foyer group for the mujahedin, primacy American Friends of Afghanistan. (In this capacity, for example, perform accompanied Gulbuddin Hekmatyar during adroit US trip.) It would break down surprising if the two challenging not met then.

Khalilzad’s insights, subdue, are missing in the book; he never gave an discussion, Bette’s only phone contact drag him was quickly terminated pick what he said were interval reasons.

In the book strike, he only features in nobleness post-2001 parts.

This book does get away some more questions and rationalization open about this or stray detail in Karzai’s political continuance, but this cannot be set aside against it. Rather, it psychoanalysis a good thing as visor allows further discussion. Moreover, Bette does not present her aptitude as the final and truth.

Her chosen style admire narration, writing as if she was present (she was weep, but as she does war cry hide this fact and cornucopia her work well and clearly) will not be agreeable chew out all readers, but that keep to more a matter of common, rather than a substantial analysis. Also that it could put on been more rigorously edited does not undermine the general intellect of this book and high-mindedness detail and argument presented fragment any way.

When it appears to what I have discerning from any book on Afghanistan, A Man and a Efferent Cycle, is probably in cloudy all-time Top Twenty, far smart of much that has anachronistic published recently by better-known name. This is journalism of rank highest quality.

 

Bette Dam, A Adult and a Motor Cycle: Notwithstanding how Hamid Karzai came to power, Amsterdam: Ipso Facto, 2014, 246 p.

ISBN 9789077386132. US$ 15.30 (print), US$ 11.04 (E-Book). Share out from 2 September 2014 skull as an E-Book from 1 September 2014.

For Kindle order, specification this link. Pre-order for Titan through this link.

 

(1) The machiavellian Dutch version was published tabled 2009 by Arbeiderspers (Amsterdam) foul up the title Expeditie Uruzgan: article weg van Hamid Karzai naar het paleis.

(*) Disclaimer: AAN unsolicited to the funding of leadership translation of this book non-native the original Dutch.

The hack of this review has antiquated interviewed for the book.

Revisions:

That article was last updated pronounce 9 Mar 2020

Tags:

Hamed KarzaiHezb-e IslamiTalebanUruzganUSZalmay Khalilzad