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Karzai demands control

An Afghan security officer checks vehicles in Kabul, Afghanistan, on Saturday as the search continues for Italian Clementina Cantoni. The kidnapping of the CARE relief worker last week is the latest attack targeting foreigners in Kabul. (Associated Press / The Spokesman-Review)
Associated Press
An Afghan security officer checks vehicles in Kabul, Afghanistan, on Saturday as the search continues for Italian Clementina Cantoni. The kidnapping of the CARE relief worker last week is the latest attack targeting foreigners in Kabul. (Associated Press / The Spokesman-Review)

KABUL, Afghanistan – President Hamid Karzai may have been playing to his domestic audience, talking tough and issuing stringent demands for changes in U.S. policy in Afghanistan only hours before he left for four days of meetings in the United States.

Whatever his motive, some of Karzai’s complaints seemed to be strong echoes from Iraq, where similar accusations have been leveled against a U.S. military force that exceeds the one in Afghanistan by nearly 10 times.

The Afghan leader – viewed by many as an American puppet – demanded greater control Saturday over American military operations in his country and called for vigorous punishment of any U.S. troops who mistreat prisoners.

He also said he wants the United States to hand over all Afghan prisoners still in U.S. custody.

In a volatile southern province, meanwhile, a U.S. soldier was killed and three were wounded in the latest in a string of attacks launched by loyalists of the ousted Taliban regime.

Speaking to reporters before his first visit to the United States since he was installed in December as Afghanistan’s first democratically elected president, Karzai demanded more say over operations by the 16,700 U.S. troops still in the country, including an end to raids on the homes of Afghans unless his government was notified beforehand.

“No operations inside Afghanistan should take place without the consultation of the Afghan government,” he said.

Karzai issued the tough statement after fresh reports of prisoner abuse by American forces at Bagram, the main military prison north of Kabul, and anti-U.S. riots that broke out across the country earlier this month, leaving at least 15 people dead. The unrest was triggered by a Newsweek magazine report, later retracted, that the Quran was defiled by interrogators at the U.S. prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and likely further fueled by long-standing complaints of heavy-handed search operations and the deaths of civilians in U.S. operations in Afghanistan.

There were fears a report in Friday’s New York Times, based on the Army’s criminal probe into the December 2002 deaths of two Afghans at Bagram, could re-ignite anti-American protests.

Karzai said he was “shocked” by allegations of abuse by U.S. soldiers at Bagram and vowed to raise the issue during his U.S. visit, which begins today.

“We want the U.S. government to take very, very strong action to take away people like that (who) are working with their forces in Afghanistan,” Karzai said.

Responding to the abuse allegations, Col. James Yonts, the U.S. military spokesman in Afghanistan, said: “The command has made it very clear that any incidents of abuse will not be tolerated.”