Afghan minority leaders alienate from Karzai Govt., fear civil war in Afghanistan

Washington, July 23 (ANI): A growing number of Afghan minority leaders who once participated fully in Afghanistan President Hamid Karzai's government, have expressed that his move to negotiate with the Taliban has alienated and marginalized them and feared that it might lead to civil war in the region.

According to the Washington Post, minority leaders of Tajik, Hazara and Uzbek, who once were closely associated with Karzai, have expressed their concern that Karzai is marginalizing them by making efforts to strike a peace deal with the insurgents.

Amarullah Saleh, the man who served Karzai as top intelligence official for six years has launched a campaign to warn Afghans that Karzai has lost conviction in the fight against the Taliban and is recklessly pursuing a political deal with insurgents.

He warned that Karzai's push for negotiation with insurgents is a fatal mistake, which could eventually lead to civil war.

"Karzai's chosen policy would endanger the progress made over the past nine years in the fields of democracy and women's rights. If I don't raise my voice we are headed towards a crisis," he told college students in Kabul.

The report states that Saleh is not motivated by ethnic rivalries with the majority Pashtuns or by a desire to undermine Karzai, whom he describes as a decent man and a patriot. He rather wants to use nonviolence to pressure the government into a harder line against the Taliban.

"The Taliban have reached the gates of Kabul, we will not stop this movement even if it costs our blood," Saleh said.

Although the United States officials have supported Afghan government-led talks in theory, but practically they are apprehensive as Karzai has pursued his own peace initiatives, seemingly without Western involvement.

"Any political reconciliation process has to be genuinely national and genuinely inclusive. Otherwise we're simply storing up the next set of problems that will break out. And in this country when problems break out, they tend to lead to violence," NATO's senior civilian representative in Afghanistan, Ambassador Mark Sedwill, said. (ANI)