Quotes About Karzai

Reconciliation is what takes place, of course, at higher levels. President Karzai has been very clear about the red lines for reconciliation, accept the constitution, lay down their weapons, cut their ties with al Qaeda and essentially become productive or at least participating members of society in that regard.

We all hoped in 2001 that we could put in place an Afghan government under President Karzai that would be able to control the country, make sure al-Qaeda didn't come back, and make sure the Taliban wasn't resurging. It didn't work out.

As late as 2009, 90 per cent of Afghans reckoned Karzai's performance was excellent, good or fair.

Karzai believed that Pakistan should be the main effort of the American war. As Eikenberry once put it to him, "If you had a choice about where to deploy thirty thousand new American troops, you would put five thousand into training Afghan forces, five thousand along the border with Pakistan, and twenty thousand in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas," inside Pakistan.

One view at the highest levels of the U.S. embassy in Kabul by summer's end was that Karzai "was a very clever madman—just because he was insane doesn't mean he was stupid.

I believed in the Taliban when they first appeared," Karzai later conceded. "I gave them fifty thousand dollars to help them out, and then handed them a cache of weapons I had hidden near Kandahar. . . . They were good people initially, but the tragedy was that very soon after they were taken over by the I.S.I.

As the country now turns a new leaf, our ambition is to give hope to each and every Afghan.

We all hoped in 2001 that we could put in place an Afghan government under President Karzai that would be able to control the country, make sure al-Qaeda didn't come back, and make sure the Taliban wasn't resurging. It didn't work out.

What of the election? In that, Hamid Karzai had to be pretty happy. The hundred or so voters in Barg-e Matal on August 20 generated four thousand votes. Every one of them favored the serving Afghan president.