Karzai’s role in Koran burning protests again reveals divide with U.S.

[Playinghardball]

Source:The Washington Post
By Joshua Partlow

KABUL — On the second day of the deadly riots in Kandahar, around the same time a gas canister exploded in a flaming police guard booth outside the governor’s office, Afghan President Hamid Karzai picked up the phone and called the mullah.

In that urgent moment, he told Maulvi Habibullah, a Kandahar imam and a leader of the protests, that 10 days earlier, he had already condemned in the strongest terms the Rev. Terry Jones’s decision to burn a Koran in a small Florida church on March 20, according to Karzai’s aides.

The news surprised Habibullah — “Did you really do that, Mr. President?” he said, according to one aide — and the imam agreed to urge his followers to calm down. “After the call, things got better, and people went home,” the aide said. Habibullah could not be reached for comment.

In the palace version of events, Karzai has been a concerned leader taking an active part in restoring order, amid four days of mob violence and clashes with the police that left at least 21 people dead and about 150 wounded in cities across Afghanistan.

Read more at: http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/in-the-koran-burning-protests-karzai-provacateur-or-pacifier/2011/04/04/AFtfmYdC_story.html

[Liberal Veteran]

1. Hamid Karzai: A gift from Bush that keeps on giving....

....the rest of us diarrhea and hemorrhoids.

[hfojvt]

2. for myself, I am taking Karzai's side

The US should not be on the side of supressing information, and keeping it from the people, just because we do that in our own country. I think Karzai was smart to get ahead of it and put himself on the same side as his own people.