Afghan Authorities Take Over Biggest Bank To Avoid Meltdown

Source: Joshua Partlow and Andrew Higgins / The Washington Post

Kabul – Afghanistan’s Central Bank has taken control of Kabul Bank, a politically potent financial institution partly owned by President Hamid Karzai’s brother, and ordered its chairman to hand over $160 million worth of luxury villas and other property purchased in Dubai for well-connected insiders, according to Afghan bankers and officials.

The Central Bank’s intervention aims to shore up Afghanistan’s largest private bank, whose faltering finances threatened to wreak both economic and political havoc. Kabul Bank handles salary payments for Afghan soldiers, police and teachers, and has taken in more than $1 billion in deposits from ordinary Afghans.

U.S. officials have long worried that trouble at Kabul Bank could trigger financial mayhem, a prospect that would leave Afghan security forces without pay, threaten unrest by angry – and often armed – depositors, and gravely undermine President Obama’s entire Afghan strategy.

The decision to move on Kabul Bank was made by Karzai after evidence was presented to him about the bank’s illicit dealings by the Central Bank governor, Abdul Qadir Fitrat, at a meeting about a month ago. Top U.S. commander Gen. David Petraeus was present for the meeting, according to Kabul Bank insiders, who spoke on condition of anonymity and said that Petraeus urged Karzai to take action.

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Remarks of President Barack Obama – The Way Forward in Afghanistan and Pakistan

THE WHITE HOUSE

EMBARGOED UNTIL DELIVERY

December 1, 2009

Remarks of President Barack Obama—As Prepared for Delivery

The Way Forward in Afghanistan and Pakistan

United States Military Academy at West Point

December 1, 2009

Good evening. To the United States Corps of Cadets, to the men and women of our armed services, and to my fellow Americans: I want to speak to you tonight about our effort in Afghanistan – the nature of our commitment there, the scope of our interests, and the strategy that my Administration will pursue to bring this war to a successful conclusion. It is an honor for me to do so here – at West Point – where so many men and women have prepared to stand up for our security, and to represent what is finest about our country.

To address these issues, it is important to recall why America and our allies were compelled to fight a war in Afghanistan in the first place. We did not ask for this fight. On September 11, 2001, nineteen men hijacked four airplanes and used them to murder nearly 3,000 people. They struck at our military and economic nerve centers. They took the lives of innocent men, women, and children without regard to their faith or race or station. Were it not for the heroic actions of the passengers on board one of those flights, they could have also struck at one of the great symbols of our democracy in Washington, and killed many more.

As we know, these men belonged to al Qaeda – a group of extremists who have distorted and defiled Islam, one of the world’s great religions, to justify the slaughter of innocents. Al Qaeda’s base of operations was in Afghanistan, where they were harbored by the Taliban – a ruthless, repressive and radical movement that seized control of that country after it was ravaged by years of Soviet occupation and civil war, and after the attention of America and our friends had turned elsewhere.

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Roland live blogging during President Barack Obama’s Afghanistan speech

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Powell to Obama on Afghanistan: Ignore critics, ‘take your time’

Retired Gen. Colin Powell, in an exclusive interview with me today on The Tom Joyner Morning Show, said he has advised President Barack Obama to take all the time he needs on deciding to send more troops to Afghanistan and to not bend to the will of partisans on the political left and the right.

Powell, a 35-year Army veteran, former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and later secretary of state, said whatever President Obama makes will have “consequences for years to come.”

“If you decide to send more troops or that’s what you feel it is necessary, make sure you have a good understanding of what those troops are going to be doing and some assurance that the additional troops will be successful,” Powell said this morning. “You can’t guarantee success in a very complex theater like Afghanistan and increasingly with the Pakistan problem next door. But you have to have some sense of what these additional troops will be able to do.”

President Obama is conducting another meeting today with his national security team as they weigh the request of Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan, who wants as many as 40,000 troops to advance the war in terror there. A CNN/Opinion Research poll released today shows the nation split: 49 percent question whether the president is taking too long to decide, and 50 percent do not think so.

One of the president’s biggest critics, former vice president Dick Cheney, ripped the White House earlier for “dithering” on the request, saying President Obama must show leadership and heed the call of his general on the ground.

Yet Powell, who often tangled with Cheney during his time as secretary of state under President George W. Bush, said President Obama must weigh the troop request, as well as political situation on the ground in Afghanistan, which has mired in a presidential election quagmire over allegations of widespread corruption.

“You’ve got to ensure that you’re putting this commitment on a solid base, and the base is a little soft right now. We’ve got a president in Afghanistan that had a rough election; a lot of corruption associate with the election; a lot of corruption in the government,” Powell said. “And he has been told, Mr. Karzai has been told, and I know him very well, he’s been told he’s got to do something about this; he’s got to do something about the drug problem, and he’s got to start pulling the Afghan people together.

“And so the president has to measure that; what kind of base is he putting this new strategy on because it isn’t just what we do; shat do the Afghans do. And as I said a moment ago, it’s made particularly difficult because of the unstable situation along the Pakistan border and in Pakistan.”

Powell admitted that the decision facing President Obama is a difficult one.

“It isn’t just a one-time decision,” Powell said. “This is the decision that will have consequences for the better part of his administration. So Mr. President, don’t get pushed by the left to do nothing; don’t get pushed by the right to do everything. You take your time and you figure it out.

“You’re the commander-in-chief and this is what you were elected for.”

Click here to listen the interview with Powell on Afghanistan issue.

Click here to listen to full 9-minute interview with Powell on Veterans Day, the military as a career, and Afghanistan.

Roland S. Martin is senior analyst for the Tom Joyner Morning Show, a nationally-syndicated radio show heard in more than 110 markets. He can be heard daily at 7:15 a.m. EST. Martin is also a CNN Contributor and host/managing editor of “Washington Watch with Roland Martin” on TV One Cable Network. The show airs Sundays at 11 a.m. EST and 5 p.m. EST.

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