Afghan Ex-President Hamid Karzai Angles for National Role After Taliban Takeover

When the Taliban rolled into Kabul a 7 days back and Afghan President Ashraf Ghani fled, another nationwide leader appeared on video clip from inside the city, assuring folks that he was heading nowhere: the country’s former head of state, Hamid Karzai.

Mr. Karzai—who led the to start with Afghan govt immediately after the Taliban were ousted in 2001 and served as president right up until 2014—stood together with his three youthful daughters, having difficulties to make himself read over the din of U.S. helicopters evacuating Individuals and requested his fellow citizens not to worry.

“My family, my women and I are listed here with you,” the former president informed citizens of the cash. “I inquire of the safety forces and the Taliban that anywhere they are, they will seem immediately after the safety of the folks.”

The concept wasn’t only meant to instill calm. It was also portion of a marketing campaign by Mr. Karzai that he states is aimed at blocking preventing and negotiating some sort of electric power-sharing agreement among the Taliban and other Afghan political forces. For the earlier two yrs, Mr. Karzai has sought to place himself at the centre of this sort of initiatives.

Previous Sunday, he mentioned he was forming a three-man or woman “coordination council” to safe a peaceful transfer of electric power along with Abdullah Abdullah, the head of the former Afghan government’s peace delegation, and the veteran Islamist warlord Gulbuddin Hekmatyar.