Karzai: Bin Laden death proves Afghanistan not ‘place of terrorism’

Afghan President Hamid Karzai speaks during a district assembly gathering at the presidential palace in Kabul, Afghanistan Monday, May 2, 2011. Afghanistan’s president lauded Osama bin Laden’s death as a serious blow to terrorism Monday and argued that the strike in Pakistan proves the real fight against terrorists is outside his country’s borders. (AP Photo/Hossein Fatemi)

By Ashish Kumar Sen

Afghan President Hamid Karzai said Osama bin Laden’s death in Pakistan proves that his country is “not the place of terrorism.”

“If the international forces are true allies of the Afghans, they should come out and say that the killing of Afghans, children and elders which took place over the many years on a daily basis was not a good idea,” Mr. Karzai said Monday on state television.

Mr. Karzai added that he hopes bin Laden’s death will bring an end to terrorism.

The Afghan president said the war against terrorism should not be carried out in Afghanistan, but in bin Laden’s “safe haven, sanctuary and his training camp,” a reference to Pakistan. Navy commandoes killed bin Laden in a compound in Abbottabad, a town north of the Pakistani capital, Islamabad.

‘The war against terrorism is not in the houses of innocent Afghan civilians. The fight against terrorism is not in bombing children and women in Afghanistan,” he added.

Mr. Karzai regularly denounces U.S. attacks on suspected hideouts of Taliban militants when civilians are accidentally killed. He the Taliban, which sheltered bin Laden until the U.S. invasion in 2001, should “learn their lesson” and stop fighting.

“I call on the Taliban to learn their lesson from what happened in Abbottabad yesterday, and refrain from fighting, refrain from destroying their own country and killing their own brothers, Muslims, and children of their own land,” he said.

“They should side with peace and security and save their own country from this misery and chaos. If they haven’t learned their lesson by now, I hope they would realize it today that they shouldn’t fight against their own people.”