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December 11, 2001
KANDAHAR, Afghanistan -- The newly appointed prime minister of Afghanistan's interim government urged the United States on Monday to never again "walk away from Afghanistan" and promised that his country would be "a good friend, a trusted friend and an ally" in the U.S.-led fight against terrorism.
In an interview two days after arriving in Kandahar, the former citadel of Taliban power, Hamid Karzai said he completely backed U.S. efforts to capture or kill members of Osama bin Laden's terrorist network.
"We must finish them all," he said, "completely burn them out."
Karzai's interview followed the fall Friday of this dirt poor, war-ravaged city to a coterie of Pashtun tribes. Karzai spoke at his new headquarters, the sprawling former residence of Mohammed Omar, the leader of the Taliban whom Karzai called "a fugitive, a criminal."
Tribal elders, sporting elaborately embroidered turbans and tunics, filled the room, lit by a single gas lamp. Many kissed Karzai's right hand, a Pashtun sign of respect. Several were among 1,800 political prisoners whom Karzai had ordered released from jail since the fall of Kandahar.
Karzai said Afghanistan faces a daunting task to build a functioning state on the wreckage of 23 years of war, "but first we must root out all the terrorists. . . . We are going after all of al-Qaida's safe houses."
He said he was appealing to all Afghans to look for Omar and bin Laden -- a message he says he has been delivering personally to village elders and tribal leaders.
"Omar has committed crimes; he's killed thousands of people; he's destroyed vineyards; he's butchered my country; he's brought terrorists here," Karzai said. "I want him tried."
With a bombed-out window and a broken air conditioner as a backdrop, the 43-year-old son of a prominent Afghan politician also pledged to push for the disarming of Afghanistan's citizens. Karzai's father was assassinated two years ago. "The gun has to stop ruling the country," he said.
Karzai said he was sure that Afghanistan would not repeat the same mistakes it made nine years ago when a victory against the Soviet Union turned into another nine years of civil war as the victorious factions battled over the spoils of war, leading to the rise of the Taliban and its cozy relationship with bin Laden and members of his al-Qaida terrorist network.
However, just days after Karzai was appointed interim prime minister of a government that will take power on Dec. 22, he has faced his first crisis. Under a deal Karzai brokered with the Taliban, Mullah Naqibullah, a pro-Taliban commander, was supposed to assume control of Kandahar. That was pre-empted, however, when Gul Agha Shirzai, the exiled former governor of Kandahar, marched into the city on Friday and seized the governor's house and the foreign ministry.
In a series of last-ditch meetings, held to avoid an eruption of the type of factional fighting that brought Afghanistan to its knees, Karzai brokered a compromise, allowing Agha to resume his old position, and Naqibullah to become his deputy.
Karzai said he planned to head to Kabul in two days to get ready to assume power. While he was in Shawali Kot, his wartime headquarters, 20 miles north of Kabul, he said, he wrote a letter of thanks to President Bush.
In Kandahar Monday night, Karzai and Agha dined together and met representatives from a municipal council. Speeches were given. Karzai called it "the first touch of democracy in Afghanistan."
Karzai said the United States must not repeat the same mistake it made 12 years ago, when, after helping to defeat the Soviet occupation, it abandoned Afghanistan to its neighbors, Pakistan and Iran, and the radical Islam practiced by the influential foreign fighters like bin Laden.
"Things went wrong in Afghanistan because the United States walked away," he said. "So don't walk away again."
-- Information from the Associated Press was used in this report.