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ISBN-10: 0470134003
ISBN-13: 9780470134009
Edition: 2007
List price: $25.95
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Description:
This is Hamid Karzai's own amazing story, as revealed in a series of exclusive interviews. This intimate portrait of Karzai as few know him tells of his improbable rise, from his birth as the son of a Pashtun tribal chief to the presidency of Afghanistan at one of modern history's most dramatic moments. The author draws on his own twenty-year association with Afghanistan and his long acquaintance with Karzai to provide context to what Karzai told him and to discuss subjects that a sitting president is reluctant to discuss. The book also raises tough questions about Karzai's leadership, the west's commitment to Afghanistan, and the prospects for the long-term survival of Afghanistan's… first-ever experiment with democracy. Karzai's life spans the fall of the Afghan monarchy, the rise of brutal Communist regimes, the invasion of Afghanistan by the Soviet Union, the ten-year jihad, which defeated the Soviets, the ruinous civil wars, the coming of the Taliban and their evil cohort, Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda. Karzai was intimately involved in the events of those years. His education and fluent English allowed him to bridge the East-West divide, and when the moment came for courageous action following the attacks of 9/11/2001, it was Karzai who slipped into Afghanistan to lead a popular uprising against the Taliban. On one momentous day, Karzai was nearly killed by an errant American bomb, became the head of the Interim Afghan Government, and received the Taliban's surrender in a humble schoolroom in an Afghan village. Three years later he was elected president in Afghanistan's first-in-history democratic election. Today, criticized for indecisiveness, called the "president of Kabul" by critics, targeted for assassination by extremists, Karzai struggles to build on the country's modest post-Taliban achievements before civil unrest, brought on by the slow pace of reconstruction and a glaring lack of security, undermines the new government. A charismatic hero in the West, a falling star at home, Karzai must try to reconcile his country's deep-rooted conservative traditions, often reviled by the West, with the fervent desires of many Afghans for education, prosperity, and a place in the modern world, while fighting off the increasing attacks launched by the Taliban and al Qaeda, with the shadowy backing of Pakistan's powerful intelligence service. This, while dealing with Afghanistan's unchecked illegal drug production and a parliament in which many seats are held by warlords, drug lords or their proxies. Now Karzai's presidency is in peril, and cannot survive without western support to fuel the engines of reconstruction and ensure the security of the population. Karzai warns the West not to abandon Afghanistan again, as it did after the Soviet withdrawal, or, in his words, "the same terrible drama of death and destruction will take the stage again.