Hard to find a Karzai supporter in Afghanistan

British journalist Chris Sands, whom we've featured before on this blog (see here), writes in the New Statesman:

Chris Sands

Afghanistan: is it too late?
The Taliban are very far from being defeated. Worse, western governments are in denial about the dangers of failing

[W]hat the west is starting to acknowledge, people here have known for some time: Afghanistan is not a success story. ...

Earlier this year I met the husband of an MP from southern Afghanistan. With him was a team of bodyguards that he had hired recently after his wife received threatening phone calls telling her never to go back to parliament. When I asked him who was responsible, he insisted it was allies of Karzai. People are frightened by all sides in this war, including government and Nato-led forces. ...

Mahfouz Khan was killed in [a suicide bombing]. At first, his brother Isatullah could only find a familiar-looking pair of legs in the morgue. Then he discovered the body. ...

"I will never blame the suicide bomber. Maybe he was in trouble or had been given bad advice. Someone had put him under pressure and told him this would be Islamic, or perhaps he was just very poor," said Isatullah. "But I blame my government. If we had a proper government that could deploy good police on our borders how could these people cross into our cities? There is no real government and no real police. Everyone in the government is a killer."

It is now hard to find an Afghan who genuinely supports Karzai. From Kabul to Kandahar, people complain that his administration is incompetent and corrupt. Their loyalty is to tribal elders, religious leaders or militia commanders, not to a regime they believe to be the tool of the Americans. ...

Violence is also rising in the north, where warlords are tightening their grip on power. ...

Many people hate the Taliban, but that does not mean they like Britain, the US, Nato or the Karzai government. In the words of a former Northern Alliance commander, a one-time ally of the US: "Now when any foreigner is killed every Afghan says, 'Praise be to God.'" (link)