Karzai calls for Afghan lead as West warns of tough year (Roundup)

Feb 7, 2010, 13:28 GMT

Munich - The West must let Afghans run their own country, including by carrying out peace talks with former militants, President Hamid Karzai said Sunday as top British and US officials warned of hard fighting to come.

Karzai is officially supported by Western governments, but tensions over issues such as civilian casualties and Western arrests of Afghan officials and accusations of corruption continue to strain the relationship.

Improving the situation 'means enabling Afghanistan to deliver services to the people and removing any parallel activity to that of the Afghan government,' Karzai told the annual Munich Security Conference.

NATO-led reconstruction teams, non-governmental organizations, international aid groups and bodies such as the United Nations 'must be a support to the Afghan government, not a rival to it,' Karzai said, repeating the phrase four times to hammer the point home.

The US special envoy to Afghanistan and Pakistan, Richard Holbrooke, acknowledged that world powers had too often sidelined the Afghan government in the past.

'Only 10 per cent of United States aid was going through the Afghan government: American aid was undermining the government we were supposed to help,' he said.

The current US administration has reversed that policy, he said.

Peace will also require full international support for a plan to fund militants who agree to give up fighting and come back into civil life, Karzai said.

'The environment demands us to engage in some form of meaningful integrated reconciliation and reintegration activity, fully understood in agreement with and backed by our international partners ... We did not have full understanding in the past,' Karzai said.

The proposal has caused controversy in the West, where some commentators have portrayed it as buying off al-Qaeda.

US Senator and former presidential candidate John McCain stressed that the programme would only be open to those militants who are ready to renounce violence and live by the constitution.

'I don't think (Taliban leader) Mullah Omar is ever going to come to the table, but a majority of these fighters will be open to coming over to our side,' McCain said.

And both McCain and Holbrooke stressed that militants would only be likely to leave the insurgency if they were facing defeat.

Reconciliation 'is not an alternative to the military campaign: it requires military success to make progress,' Holbrooke said.

However, the push for victory, driven by the impending arrival of an extra 40,000 troops in Afghanistan, is certain to lead to hard fighting and rising casualties.

'We will have a tough year in 2010. There will be casualties. We need to let our allies know that. It's going to be a very tough year,' McCain said.

'2010 is going to be a difficult year, but it's also going to be a decisive year. It has to be. We have to warn our populations of the difficulties to come. They can't believe there won't be sacrifice in the months ahead,' British Defence Minister Bob Ainsworth agreed.

Karzai warned that the military push should focus on avoiding built-up areas, to keep civilian casualties to a minimum.

'Ending operations in Afghan villages is what the Afghan people are seeking,' Karzai said.

Alongside the NATO-led military boost, Western powers want to see the Afghan police and professional army boosted to 300,000 men by October 2011. Karzai suggested that one way to achieve that goal would be to re-introduce conscription.

'For the past many years I've been visited by Afghan community leaders who advise me to go back to some form of conscription for the Afghan army ... This will be philosophically one of our pursuits as we move ahead to the future, in consultation with the Afghan people,' he said.

And he demanded that Western forces stop unilaterally arresting Afghan civilians and officials, instead letting the Afghan law-enforcement agencies do it.

'That means ending raids on Afghan homes at night, ending arrests in Afghan homes and villages, Afghanistan regaining judicial independence completely and very very soon ... Suspects must be taken by Afghan forces through the Afghan judicial system and by the laws of Afghanistan,' he said.