Kabul: President Hamid Karzai said on Sunday
Washington's war strategy for Afghanistan needed a rethink, as
a Taliban-led insurgency gathers pace and foreign forces
casualties surge.
Karzai made the comments to the visiting Norbert Lammert,
president of the German parliament, the Afghan president's
office said in a statement.
"Speaking about Afghanistan and regional security
(Karzai) said that the strategy of the war on terrorism must
be reassessed," the statement said.
"The experience over the past eight years showed that
fighting (Taliban) in Afghan villages has been ineffective and
is not achieving anything but killing civilians."
Rethinking counter-insurgency strategies in Afghanistan
was the war-torn country's most pressing need, Karzai said.
"This has become a serious need in the current
situation," he was quoted saying.
Earlier in the week, the Western-backed Karzai told
American officials that Washington and its NATO allies must
shift their military focus to insurgent hideouts on the
Pakistani side of the border.
Speaking to US congressmen on Thursday Karzai said the
US-led military campaign against Islamist insurgents in
Afghanistan had not made progress, blaming the shortcomings on
Washington's handling of post-Taliban Afghanistan.
PTI
First Published: Sunday, August 29, 2010, 21:03