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Anti-Taleban leader calls for helpAfghan tribal leader Hamid Karzai has appealed for international help to rid his country of "foreign terrorists" fighting with the Taleban. Mr Karzai was speaking to BBC World in an interview which goes some way to clearing up confusion about his whereabouts and a clandestine mission in Afghanistan. He said he had entered southern Afghanistan several weeks ago, and was safe and well in the southern part of central Uruzgan province after walking for three days to evade capture by Taleban forces. The influential Pashtun leader he said he could defeat the Taleban without outside help, but needed assistance to help the country "regain independence" from Arabs and other foreigners. "I want these foreign terrorist elements out of my country, I want it to belong to Afghans," he said. He also called for an end to US bombing, and asked for the kind of help provided by foreign governments during the war against the Soviet Union in the 1980s. Hamid Karzai: Taleban's powerful foe By Eurasia analyst Pam O'TooleHamid Karzai is a highly influential figure and potentially commands the loyalty of large numbers of Afghans. He is a powerful Pashtun tribal leader from the Taleban's political stronghold of Kandahar and a member of the same clan as the former Afghan king, Zahir Shah. He is well educated and Westernised. He speaks English fluently and served as a deputy foreign minister in Afghanistan's first Mujaheddin government in 1992. At the moment he appears to be the Afghan opposition's best hope for building an alternative Pashtun powerbase to the Taleban. When the Taleban erupted on to Afghanistan's political scene in the early 1990s, Hamid Karzai initially supported them. However, by late 1994 he had become suspicious of the movement, fearing it had been infiltrated and was controlled by foreigners, including Pakistanis and Arabs. Father assassinated Recently he said it was time to get rid of such people. "These Arabs, together with their foreign supporters and the Taleban, destroyed miles and miles of homes and orchards and vineyards," he said. "They have killed Afghans. They have trained their guns on Afghan lives. "These Arabs are in Afghanistan to learn to shoot. They learn to shoot on live targets and those live targets are the Afghan people, our children our women. We want them out." When his father - a former parliamentary deputy - was assassinated two years ago, the murder was widely attributed to the Taleban. Mr Karzai has also retained his links with Zahir Shah. He has long supported the former king's plans to build a broad-based government in Afghanistan through the convening of a grand tribal assembly known as a loya jirga. In the wake of the 11 September suicide attacks in New York and Washington he was said to have received a stream of disaffected Afghan commanders and tribal leaders at his home in the Pakistani city of Quetta. In October Mr Karzai slipped across the border into Afghanistan. The Taleban will certainly be keen to capture him. |
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