Karzai Orders U.S. Special Forces Out of Afghan Province
By Eltaf Najafizada & Kasia Klimasinska - Feb 24, 2013 5:35 PM ET
Afghanistan President Hamid Karzai yesterday ordered U.S. special forces to leave Wardak province in the nation’s east within two weeks
after investigators said Afghans working for the forces were torturing and murdering fellow citizens.
An investigation ordered by Karzai found Afghans working for the U.S. special forces in Wardak were “harassing, annoying, torturing, and even murdering innocent people,” according to an e-mailed statement from Karzai’s press office in Kabul yesterday. The investigators had been asked to identify causes of insecurity in Wardak and Logar provinces.
A national security committee meeting chaired by Karzai yesterday also decided that NATO’s International Security Assistance Forces, or ISAF, should stop all special forces operations in Wardak effective from yesterday, according to Karzai’s statement.
“We take all allegations of misconduct seriously and go to great lengths to determine the facts surrounding them,” ISAF said yesterday in an e-mailed statement. “But until we have had a chance to speak with senior Government of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan officials about this issue, we are not in a position to comment further. This is an important issue that we intend to fully discuss with our Afghan counterparts.”
Karzai also decided that any country seeking to keep troops in Afghanistan after 2014 would only be allowed to do so after the “Afghan government’s formal agreement, to be achieved bilaterally,” according to the statement.
To contact the reporter on this story: Eltaf Najafizada in Kabul at enajafizada1@bloomberg.net
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Peter Hirschberg at phirschberg@bloomberg.net
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