Remarks of former president Hamid Karzai in Turkey over failure of US strategy in defeating insurgency in Afghanistan has met with mixed reaction from analysts.
Addressing the TRT World Forum in Turkey on Thursday, Karzai said the United States’ strategy in Afghanistan is defeated and it has achieved nothing but caused destructions and killings in the country.
Karzai said although 17 years have passed since US presence in Afghanistan, but still Afghans are being killed. He said insurgent groups such as Haqqani network and Daesh are increasing their movements in the country.
“Americas stated objectives of defeating terrorism did not happen, it faulted. The consequences of that failure are tragic for the Afghan people. Massive human losses, 17 years on, every day we have people killed. Yesterday we had 26 people were killed in eastern Afghanistan in election rally,” said Karzai.
Some political affairs analysts said Karzai is right and that the US strategy is defeated; however, others said these remarks are the former president’s personal point of view.
The analyst said that by making such remarks, Karzai wants to say that he was right when he refused to sign the Bilateral Security Agreement (BSA) with the US in 2014, because he knew Americans would not keep their promises.
“Karzai speaks from a stance of worthiness to indicate that we opposed (signing BSA) at the time because we knew Americans would not act based on it (BSA). We knew their game is something out of Afghanistan issues. Karzai’s claims now have changed into reality. The government after Karzai unfortunately is acting in a strange way,” political affairs analyst Rahmatullah Bezhanpoor said.
Other analysts said that at the end of his presidency, Karzai acted in a way that affected Afghanistan’s relations with countries in the region.
“At the end of his presidency, Karzai took an intense stance in his relations with the region. He organized these relations in a way that they influenced Afghanistan’s ties with NATO and US,” said Ahmad Shah Shahin, a political affairs analyst.
Following his refusal in signing BSA with US in 2014, Karzai changed to an anti-US politics figure in Afghanistan.