Afghan President Hamid Karzai believes the United States has conducted a series of bombings and terror attacks in his country as part of a campaign to destabilize his regime and draw attention away from airstrikes that caused civilian casualties.
Citing unnamed senior Afghan officials, The Washington Post reported late Monday that
Karzai blames the U.S. for the Jan. 17 bombing of a popular Lebanese-style restaurant in Kabul that killed 21 people, among them three Americans, as well as assaults on the Justice Ministry in Kabul and a provincial courthouse that took 50 lives.
The Taliban has taken credit for the attacks, but Karzai still blames the U.S., pro-Karzai sources told the Post, because he believes the attack against the restaurant was "too sophisticated to be the handiwork of [the] Taliban." The Post also noted that Karzai has acknowledged there is no evidence to back up his charges.
In response, the U.S. Ambassador to Afghanistan, James Cunningham, told the Post, "It's a deeply conspiratorial view that's divorced from reality."
He suggested Karzai's claims could be part of an effort to "throw us off balance" because he has yet to sign a security agreement already negotiated that would leave a substantial U.S. military presence in the country beyond the scheduled withdrawal date at the end of this year.
"It flies in the face of logic and morality to think that we would aid the enemy we're trying to defeat," said Cunningham.
Gen. Joseph Dunford Jr., the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan, also said that "any suggestion that the U.S. has been involved in any way in suicide attacks or deliberate attacks on Afghan civilians is ludicrous.
"We have spent 12 years trying to bring peace and stability to Afghanistan in the face of threats from terrorist and insurgent networks . . . To suggest otherwise does a grave disservice to those who have sacrificed for the people of Afghanistan."
The latest claim from Karzai follows a
charge he made last year alleging the U.S. had joined with the Taliban to conspire against him, The Christian Science Monitor reported at the time.
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