Kandahar: Karzai, McChrystal meet the local Taliban leaders
World
Kandahar: Karzai, McChrystal meet the local Taliban leaders
Afghan President Hamid Karzai visited the Taliban's spiritual home on Sunday, launching a campaign that promises better governance and development alongside a security push by foreign forces.Accompanied by the commander of foreign forces in Afghanistan, US General Stanley McChrystal, Karzai pleaded for support from a gathering of several hundred elders in Kandahar, the city that launched the Taliban and the capital of the province where their insurgency is at its strongest. Right now the life of Kandahar is a very bad life, he said at a conference hall in the city. Step by step, we can go forward. In recent years Karzai has rarely ventured to Kandahar, where he survived an assassination attempt in 2005. He has strong family roots there, however. His brother chairs the provincial assembly and has been accused of corruption, charges he denies. Washington's strategy to end the nine-year-old war involves a surge of troops to improve security accompanied by development schemes that provide jobs and an improvement in government services. Karzai's administration has been accused in the past of not keeping its side of the bargain, but McChrystal said he believed the government was taking action now.
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