Afghan Ex-President Hamid Karzai Angles for National Role After Taliban Takeover

When the Taliban rolled into Kabul a week ago and Afghan President Ashraf Ghani fled, another countrywide leader appeared on movie from inside of the city, assuring people today that he was going nowhere: the country’s former head of condition, Hamid Karzai.

Mr. Karzai—who led the to start with Afghan governing administration soon after the Taliban had been ousted in 2001 and served as president until finally 2014—stood alongside his three younger daughters, battling to make himself listened to more than the din of U.S. helicopters evacuating Individuals and asked his fellow citizens not to panic.

“My family, my women and I are here with you,” the former president informed inhabitants of the money. “I inquire of the stability forces and the Taliban that wherever they are, they will search soon after the stability of the people today.”

The concept was not only supposed to instill tranquil. It was also aspect of a marketing campaign by Mr. Karzai that he says is aimed at stopping battling and negotiating some type of electricity-sharing arrangement among the Taliban and other Afghan political forces. For the past two years, Mr. Karzai has sought to place himself at the middle of this sort of initiatives.

Final Sunday, he said he was forming a three-person “coordination council” to secure a peaceful transfer of electricity alongside with Abdullah Abdullah, the head of the former Afghan government’s peace delegation, and the veteran Islamist warlord Gulbuddin Hekmatyar.