“Let Other People Get a Chance to Run”: Karzai Tells Fortune He Won’t Seek Reelection

Afghan President Hamid Karzai “strongly suggested he will serve just one term as Afghan leader and not contest his country’s next presidential election scheduled for 2009,” Fortune Magazine reported today. “‘I don’t think it is good to be running all the time. Let other people get a chance to run,’” Karzai said. He added that he wanted to leave Afghanistan with “a good legacy” and to make it “stable and constitutionally strong.”

According to the piece:

“While the election is still three years away, Karzai’s remarks raise significant questions for his desperately poor country and for the international community that props it up – questions of who might replace him, how as much as $20 billion in foreign aid is dispersed, and what impact a lame-duck presidency might have on a government engaged in battle with a resurgent Taliban in its restive southern provinces.”

Karzai also told Fortune he acknowledges “corruption in the whole system” of Afghanistan’s government; that he had “underestimated the task of eradicating opium poppy production,” and that “the international community has weakened his government by rewarding regional pro-U.S. warlords for their role in the Taliban’s ouster, though he insisted there were no warlords in his cabinet or administration.”

He blamed the international community not standing with him as the reason he has not been a stronger leader, according to Fortune.

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