US has ties with interim prime minister in Afghanistan that go back years

By SALLY BUZBEE
Associated Press Writer

WASHINGTON – The new interim prime minister of Afghanistan first came to the attention of U.S. officials when he helped funnel covert American aid to the mujahedeen fighting the Soviets occupying his country.

Since then, Hamid Karzai – a 43-year-old Pashtun hereditary tribal leader who speaks perfect English – has testified before Congress and visited the State Department often. Three of his brothers live in the United States.

When the war on terrorism began in October, the United States gave Karzai ammunition and food to support his efforts to defeat the Taliban in southern Afghanistan. He was almost captured once, but Americans whisked him to safety by helicopter.

Karzai is viewed by American officials as the best hope for stability, a politician who can get along with most of Afghanistan's myriad ethnic groups.

But that relationship with the United States could hit a rocky road over the fate of Taliban leader Mullah Mohammed Omar. Under a deal for Taliban forces to surrender their last stronghold of Kandahar, Karzai said Omar would have to distance himself from terrorism. But he left unclear if Omar would be arrested, as the United States has demanded.

Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld warned Thursday that America's relationship with opposition leaders would "take a turn south" if Omar is let free.

U.S. officials have praised Karzai publicly since he was named to head the interim government.

"He's widely known and respected by almost all Afghan groups," said State Department spokesman Philip Reeker.

Privately, U.S. officials say his strengths are his family connections as hereditary leader of an important Pashtun tribe; his ties to the exiled king; his relations with the northern alliance; and his clean human rights record, absent the history of killings of some Afghan warlords.

Karzai is "a very sophisticated, moderate nationalist," Afghanistan expert Thomas E. Gouttierre of the University of Nebraska, Omaha, told a Senate committee Thursday. "He doesn't see himself just as regional."

Karzai is not seen as much of a military commander. He has just several thousand men and has mostly used his political clout, rather than fighting, to persuade local officials to turn against the Taliban.

In addition, the very fluency with English and Western dress that make him more accessible to Westerners could hurt his ability to run the country, said Andrew Hess, an Afghan specialist at Tufts University's Fletcher School.

Karzai also must hold his own against the wily northern alliance leaders who garnered the most powerful ministries in his new government, Hess said.

His ties with U.S. officials go back years. As an exile in Pakistan in the mid-1980s he was "one of the people connecting the mujahedeen to the outside world," helping to funnel covert American aid to the Afghans fighting the Soviets, said Don Ritter, a former congressman then active in the effort to arm Afghanis.

Ritter and others said Karzai worked closely with U.S. intelligence.

The CIA refused comment.

For years after that war, the United States mostly ignored Afghanistan. Karzai was bitterly critical of that. He briefly served as deputy foreign minister in the rebel government torn by factional fighting and initially supported the Taliban as an alternative to the fighting, before soon breaking with them.

After the U.S. embassy bombings in Africa in 1998, blamed on Osama bin Laden, Karzai did receive some attention from the United States again as officials searched for a moderate alternative to the Taliban who were sheltering bin Laden, said Philip Smith, a longtime Afghan analyst close to Karzai's family.

Karzai was invited by Sen. Sam Brownback, R-Kan., to testify before Congress last year, telling lawmakers that foreign fighters were ruining his country. "Our people do not and did not invite these extremist militant forces to our country," Karzai testified, but said Afghanis could do little to expel them without international help.

Messages left Thursday for Brownback were not immediately returned.

Karzai is sensitive about his ties to America.

A few weeks ago, U.S. special forces whisked him to safety in Afghanistan as he was about to be captured by Taliban forces, Rumsfeld has said. Karzai denied that, apparently fearing it would make him look weak, or look like an agent of the U.S. government.

APNP-12-06-01 1656CST