Why karzai

The election of Barack Obama and the exit of his former patron George Bush set the stage for a nasty showdown, as the US launched a massive "surge" and deployed more than , troops to Afghanistan to beat back a rising Taliban threat.

For years, Karzai warned that the heavy-handed counterinsurgency in the Taliban's southern strongholds was only reviving the movement and begged Washington instead to focus their efforts on bringing Pakistan's support for the militants' exiled leadership to heel.

Even as the insurgents bombed his capital, Karzai insisted that the Taliban must be brought into the fold, drawing harsh criticism when he called the militants "brothers".

He eventually lost the support of the West, with American officials and the media routinely pillaring him for corruption even as the US dumped billions into an impoverished, agrarian economy that was overwhelmed by the deluge -- making graft all but inevitable. The content you requested does not exist or is not available anymore. ON TV. On social media. The US no longer needed boots on the ground to fight the security threats that might emanate from Afghanistan, he said.

It signed a deal with the Taliban in February to withdraw its troops in exchange for a Taliban promise to denounce armed groups such as al-Qaeda and keep Afghanistan from again being a staging arena for attacks on the US. There is little evidence the Taliban are fulfilling their part of the bargain. The United Nations claims the Taliban and al-Qaeda are still linked. The architect of the US deal and current US peace envoy Zalmay Khalilzad says some progress has been made but without offering any details.

Karzai has had harsh words and uncompromising criticism of US war tactics over the past twenty years in Afghanistan. Yet he has become a linchpin of sorts in a joint effort being launched by the US and the United Kingdom to get a quarrelsome Afghan leadership in Kabul united enough to talk peace with the Taliban. The armed group has shown little interest in negotiating and instead has stepped up its assaults on government positions.

In their first face-to-face meeting , Biden will seek to reassure Ghani and Abdullah of US support for the Afghan people including diplomatic, economic and humanitarian assistance, the White House said in a statement.

Taliban leadership will meet later this week to discuss and set out the system of governance, but any semblance of democracy has already been ruled out. It is sharia law and that is it. Hashimi said Taliban would also ask former pilots and soldiers from the Afghan armed forces to join its ranks. He did not allay fears that this Taliban regime would be as repressive towards women as it was last time they were in power.

That is up to them. In Jalalabad, in north-east Afghanistan, dozens of protesters were attacked by the Taliban as they raised the national flag and lowered the Taliban flag planted by the militants.

Video footage showed the Taliban firing into the air and hitting people with batons. At least three people were killed and more than a dozen injured. In the city of Khost there were also reports of the Taliban firing on protesters against the takeover of the city.