Former Afghan president Hamid Karzai: ‘We need a country for everyone’

{"text":[[{"start":7.6,"text":"The text message finally arrives."}],[{"start":9.64,"text":"The Taliban, who have been ruling Afghanistan as a draconian Islamist regime for the past five years, have allowed Hamid Karzai to have lunch with me at his house in Kabul, where he is under a form of house arrest. A bulletproof Land Cruiser comes to fetch me from my hotel. Less than five minutes later, after a brief stop at a Taliban-manned checkpoint, I am whisked through security, behind high blast walls, into the peaceful garden of fig and pomegranate trees outside the home of the country’s first democratically elected president."}],[{"start":40.92,"text":"“Shall I take my shoes off?” I ask, stepping inside. This would be the usual custom in a country rebranded by the Taliban in 2021 from the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan to the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, the name they previously gave it between 1996 and 2001. “No need, here we are still in the Republic, not in the Emirate,” one of his advisers jokes."}],[{"start":64.04,"text":"“Welcome, welcome,” Karzai greets me with a warm handshake. He invites me to sit in a living room tastefully covered with carpets from the northern city of Mazar-i-Sharif, for tea and dried fruits — an Afghan staple — and tells me that I am the first journalist the Taliban has allowed to visit him here in the past three years."}],[{"start":82.36,"text":"It has been almost a quarter of a century since the US-led invasion of Afghanistan put Karzai in office. But five years ago, he had to deliver a video message from his garden appealing for calm after his successor, Ashraf Ghani, fled to the United Arab Emirates as the Taliban regained control of the country. Days later, bringing to an end its longest-ever war, the US withdrew its last remaining troops during a chaotic airlift that evacuated more than 120,000 civilians but left thousands of others stranded."}],[{"start":112.28,"text":"The week I met Karzai, I found myself in the streets of Kabul, amid tens of thousands of Taliban and their mujahideen followers. They danced and wielded Kalashnikov assault rifles to celebrate the anniversary of the “victory day” on which they swept back to power."}],[{"start":127.12,"text":"“Nobody could believe it,” he says. The Indian government had offered to airlift Karzai out of Afghanistan. He politely declined the gesture to New Delhi’s ambassador in Kabul: “I told him, ‘no, even if there’s a collapse coming, I will stay in my country; we are not leaving’.”"}],[{"start":null,"text":""}],[{"start":145.96,"text":"Ever since, although he maintains dialogue with Taliban leaders, many of whom are Pashtun like himself and who have been “very respectful”, Karzai has in effect been caged, restricted from meeting tribal leaders or foreign dignitaries and curtailed from travelling except for health reasons. “Can you leave the house?” I ask. “After I inform them. They provide security. They escort me to wherever I need to go. They bring me back,” he replies. “I am trapped, but the overall relationship is very respectful. They get angry at my statements, very, very much. And the restrictions are because of that . . . They call, they visit, they complain.”"}],[{"start":186.8,"text":"“And they say, ‘please, Mr President, why did you say that? We’re not that bad. Why didn’t you say something positive about us?’ And I told them that it would never come from me as long as girls are banned from school. ‘When girls go back to school, I will have something positive to say about you. Not today’,” he adds."}],[{"start":203.46,"text":"The Taliban have issued more than 100 decrees targeting women and girls. They turned Afghanistan into the only country enforcing a systematic ban on girls attending high school and women attending university. Two of the three daughters he has with his wife Zeenat are already barred from attending high school by a Taliban decree. “They are very, very sad about that,” the 68-year-old says."}],[{"start":null,"text":""}],[{"start":226.42,"text":"Karzai grew up outside Kandahar, the fourth of eight children of Abdul Ahad Karzai, a Popalzai tribal leader and parliamentarian who was close to Zahir Shah, the last king of Afghanistan, and was killed by suspected Taliban assassins in Pakistan in 1999."}],[{"start":243,"text":"After finishing high school in Kabul, Karzai moved to India for university and, years later, lived in exile in Pakistan, using his fluency in half a dozen languages to become the spokesman for one of the more moderate mujahideen factions fighting the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan. Because some Taliban members also fought against the Soviets in the 1980s as mujahideen, Karzai initially had a certain respect for the once ragtag Islamic insurgents."}],[{"start":271.62,"text":"But in 1996, led by their late leader Mullah Omar, the Taliban overthrew president Burhanuddin Rabbani, spurring an internal conflict with the newly formed Northern Alliance coalition of Afghan militia leaders, and offered shelter to al-Qaeda terrorists including Osama bin Laden. Karzai’s opposition to the Taliban grew, in part because of his revulsion over their restrictions on girls’ education and women’s rights."}],[{"start":296.6,"text":"“We were in the same struggle. I knew them personally. Some of their commanders, some of their people, we had travelled together to Afghanistan from Pakistan, we had waged our resistance against the former Soviet Union together,” Karzai says. “But the environment of a struggle is something. The environment of a political takeover is another thing,” he says."}],[{"start":317.6,"text":"In December 2001, two months into the US military campaign in Afghanistan following the 9/11 terrorist attacks, Karzai was appointed interim leader at a UN-sponsored meeting of exiles in Bonn. The very first democratic presidential election in Afghanistan was finally held in October 2004, with Karzai winning it. He won again in 2009 and left office in 2014."}],[{"start":341.56,"text":"“Shall we go to lunch?” Karzai says. He guides me to a round table and allows me to take his photograph before folding his trademark grey fur hat, which one must “never wear” during a meal. Karzai is the ultimate Afghan debonair, famous for combining traditional dresses of various ethnic groups — a shalwar kameez outfit, a striped green and blue chapan cape and his karakul cap."}],[{"start":363.8,"text":"“When I was declared head of the interim government, I was in northern Kandahar. I came to Kabul and decided I must visit the former king of Afghanistan, who was in Rome, before taking the oath of office. My father was very close to him, so I had to go to him to seek his blessings and permission. It was December [2001], it was very cold, and I had no formal clothes on me,” he says."}],[{"start":388.86,"text":"“I only had the karakul hat, which had been in my family; my grandfather wore it, my father wore it.” On the way to the airport in Kabul, Rabbani, who had returned to Kabul, handed him a “very good chapan to keep me warm”."}],[{"start":null,"text":""}],[{"start":403.64,"text":"When the stately Karzai landed in Rome, where Zahir Shah had been in exile since a coup deposed him in 1973, a paparazzo photographed him in his distinctive outfit. Soon afterwards, the fashion designer Tom Ford hailed Karzai as the “chicest man on the planet”."}],[{"start":419.88,"text":"“Not that I had planned it,” he chuckles, as we move to the dining table."}],[{"start":424.68,"text":"“What a feast!” I exclaim, as I face the mounds of food."}],[{"start":428,"text":"“This is a very typical Afghan meal,” Karzai explains. “Afghan cuisine is the richest in this part of the world because of this cultural crossroads, from the Greek influence on Afghan food, the Indian, the Persian. We are a Central Asian country, a South Asian country, and a West Asian country . . . And Kabul is a representative of all. This has been the melting pot of Afghanistan for almost 300 years,” he adds."}],[{"start":453.26,"text":"He starts with the centrepiece, the norinj palaw, a delicious orange rice with pistachios, chicken and “a little saffron from Herat”, not far from Afghanistan’s border with Iran, and discusses the ongoing US-Iran conflict. “It has a great impact on Afghanistan’s economy and on the stability of the whole region. Iran and we are very close neighbours — language, history, culture, religion. And we have millions of our refugees there,” he says."}],[{"start":480.12,"text":"“Afghanistan would very much want this war to end. During my time in office, the Americans were literally the greatest adversaries of the Iranians. But Iran understood and accepted their presence in Afghanistan and co-operated with them during the Bonn Agreement. The Americans, too, understood what I told them: Iran is our neighbour. We cannot allow our soil to be used against them and vice versa. I’m grateful to both the Americans and the Iranians for showing tremendous understanding and goodwill towards Afghanistan,” he adds."}],[{"start":null,"text":""}],[{"start":510.44,"text":"We delve into some of the other plates. “This one is called qurooti,” he says, showing me a bowl of softened bread with spinach, onions, walnuts and soft cheese. “It’s Afghanistan’s countryside food, very nourishing. We also have for you this very traditional lamb kebab from Jalalabad in eastern Afghanistan, called shinwari kabab. I love this.” The waiter effortlessly peels the meat off the bone as if it were butter. And we wash down the Afghan food with copious quantities of pomegranate juice. “No other place in the world has pomegranates like ours,” he says."}],[{"start":543.6,"text":"Ever the conciliator, Karzai presents the meal as “very much national Afghan food” seemingly to avoid upsetting the various ethnic traditions within his country."}],[{"start":552.96,"text":"That can also be applied to his politics, even as many warn against normalising the Taliban regime. “We don’t want them to go. We don’t want this country to continue with one coming [and] replacing the other. We don’t want that. We want this country to live together. The Taliban belongs to Afghanistan. And the opposition to the Taliban belongs to Afghanistan. Both are Afghans, we must find a compromise to live together. We need a country for everyone.”"}],[{"start":577.96,"text":"Over shola-e zard, a sweet sticky saffron rice, for dessert we discuss the US-led 2001-21 war against the Taliban and its impact on his tenure."}],[{"start":588.72,"text":"Afghans tend not to question Karzai’s good intentions or love of country. Yet they often complain about his government’s dysfunctionality and the corruption of many in his unruly coalition — which included members of the anti-Taliban Northern Alliance. Karzai denies wrongdoing but does not deny involvement in corruption by officials in his administration, including some warlords. The entire two-decades-long war in his country cost Washington $2.3tn — with some of the money flowing to contractors and private security companies, among others — which he says fostered the corruption around him. “It was a lot of US money coming here and in some cases used for means that did not help Afghanistan,” Karzai says."}],[{"start":630.64,"text":"While he was also often seen in Kabul as too close to the Americans, over time Karzai ended up becoming a nuisance for Washington. He had a tense relationship with Barack Obama’s administration and criticised the US and coalition forces in his country for atrocities inflicted upon Afghans — at least 46,000 civilians and 70,000 security personnel died during the war, according to US estimates. In 2009, a US envoy to Kabul viewed Karzai as “paranoid” and “weak”, according to disclosures of diplomatic cables by WikiLeaks, and as “an ever-shrewd politician who sees himself as a nationalist hero”."}],[{"start":null,"text":""}],[{"start":668.12,"text":"It was a time when Nato soldiers and bases were attacked; blast walls and huge concrete slabs began to go up around the city; Kabul became a war zone scarred by suicide bombings. “The Americans brought us a lot of resources, development, progress and Afghanistan flourished internationally. But very, very sadly, Americans also made some very serious mistakes; well, atrocities, I’m trying to be euphemistic,” he says."}],[{"start":691.16,"text":"Karzai may have failed to make peace with the Taliban, or beat them in the battlefield, but he realised early on that war in Afghanistan was futile. Still, by the time he left office, millions of Afghans had returned home, while millions of children — including girls — were enrolled in schools and Afghanistan was going through a democratic period. Soon after, Donald Trump became US president and negotiated the Doha Accord with the Taliban to end the 2001-21 war."}],[{"start":null,"text":""}],[{"start":717.84,"text":"Karzai has never been an armed fighter, let alone a warlord, something that often made him appear weak to his foes. “The Taliban are very good at providing security. That’s a plus without a doubt,” he says. “However, in terms of hope for the future, in which the fundamental is education, in areas like girls’ education, women’s rights, and ensuring people feel the country belongs to all Afghans, things are not good at all,” Karzai adds."}],[{"start":747.52,"text":"Knowing that he attended Himachal Pradesh University and that I would not be able to pay for the meal, I brought for him some traditional cashew fudge from India, where I live. “My daughters love these,” he says, and calls two of them in. Nazo, who is 12, is already facing the Taliban’s ban on girls’ secondary education; Durkhany, who is nine, still has over two years of school to go."}],[{"start":771.48,"text":"According to the UN, the Taliban have barred an estimated 2.4mn Afghan girls from secondary education since regaining power. Karzai recalls that in the early 1920s, not long after gaining independence from Britain, the first school for girls opened in Afghanistan under the rule of Emir Amanullah Khan Barakzai.“ There are lots of people among the Taliban that I know, that I’ve spoken to, who visited our house, in this very room we’ve sat down and discussed and we completely agree with the girls going to school, with the women going back to work,” he says."}],[{"start":803.2,"text":"“It is fundamental for this country to have educated women. We need them everywhere — in business, in schools, as teachers, as economists, as doctors, as engineers, as judges, as journalists. We must have Afghan girls go to school and women go to work if we are to be a vibrant society, a living society. That was happening in the republic, and centuries before that too, we had great women who were poets, rulers, revolutionaries. This is the greatest difficulty for us today, and this has been my struggle.”"}],[{"start":833.6,"text":"We move back to the living room for tea and fruit and I sit in front of a man who, many Afghans I spoke to in Kabul told me, after decades of monarchical, Communist and Taliban rule, had been the closest modern Afghanistan had to a statesman of international stature."}],[{"start":848.64,"text":"The polyglot — fluent in English, Farsi, Pashto, Urdu, Hindi and French — aristocrat, whose government built him a luxurious house near the palace but gave it up for a more frugal one, has a devotion to literature. As I savour the sweetest of figs — chosen for me by Karzai himself who, like most Afghans, is profoundly proud of his country’s fruit — we revel in the prose of Miguel de Cervantes and the poetry of Charles Baudelaire, Osip Mandelstam, Robert Frost, only stopping at Afghanistan’s own Khushal Khan Khattak. “What an immense poet,” he praises. “He has a poem on every subject, from nationalism to women’s rights.”"}],[{"start":890.08,"text":"I ask if I may take one more fig. “Please, take them all; we’ll pack them for you. But you must remember they are extremely laxative,” Karzai warns me, breaking the solemnity of his previous statements. Then, I ask him what verse he would recite to an erudite Taliban member, if one exists. “A lot of them would understand, because we are very much a poetic society; Afghans from all sides appreciate poetry,” he says."}],[{"start":914.3,"text":"And holding a fig’s stem with his fingertips, he recites one from Khattak, as if sending a message to the bearded armed men behind his house’s blast walls: “I have taken out my sword in the name of Afghan honour; I am the proudest in the world.”"}],[{"start":927.7,"text":"Andres Schipani is the FT’s South Asia correspondent"}],[{"start":931.16,"text":"Find out about our latest stories first — follow FT Weekend on Instagram, Bluesky and X, and sign up to receive the FT Weekend newsletter every Saturday morning"}],[{"start":946.76,"text":""}]],"url":"https://audio.ftcn.net.cn/album/a_1788752160_1542.mp3"}