From Occupied Afghanistan: Fact-Finding Mission - Part II

HR: I don't agree with this position at all because it does not reflect the reality on the ground. Hamid Karzai's government is corrupt from A to Z. If anyone would be complaining about the warlords stealing and drug dealings, Hamid Karzai's brother himself, Ahmad Wali Karzai, is the largest drug lord in the southern provinces. Hamid Karzai himself had links with the Taliban; he was working with the Taliban government. There is no substantial difference between Hamid Karzai and the people who would be regarded as warlords.

I think Hamid Karzai is as much a warlord as the others around him; and we must never forget that in the context of Afghanistan that the biggest warlords are the coalition forces of the NATO troops who are killing the people with much more sophisticated and modern weapons than the warlords could ever have done.

I don't buy that kind of argument that is also put forward by the mainstream western media, the mainstream politics - that they have put in place a democratic government led by Hamid Karzai that is surrounded by bad warlords. This is buying into this imperialist discourse of the issue.

The reality is that Hamid Karzai is the head of this puppet government and this puppet government is a multi-party puppet government that has different people within it: previous warlords, Mujahideen commanders, some remnants of the Peoples Democratic Party of Afghanistan, remnants of the bureaucrats from the time of the king. They are all coming together and they are all in the body of this puppet government which is supported by the American imperialists.

So to distinguish between a good section of the government and the bad section of the government, I think is playing into the politics of the western imperialists.