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Article: Karzai faces huge task of charting course for war-torn country.(Knight Ridder Newspapers)
- Article from:
- Knight Ridder/Tribune News Service
- Article date:
- December 21, 2001
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2001 Knight-Ridder/Tribune News Service. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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KABUL, Afghanistan _ Hamid Karzai, who becomes Afghanistan's interim prime minister on Saturday, has just six months to chart a course that will lead his country toward peace and reconstruction.
The task is enormous because of Afghanistan's competing ethnic rivalries and the vast destruction left from 23 years of war, six years of Taliban rule, three years of drought and weeks of U.S. airstrikes.
Karzai is a Pashtun, Afghanistan's largest ethnic group, and a native of Kandahar in southeastern Afghanistan. On the day after U.S. attacks began Oct. 7, Karzai slipped into southern Afghanistan and became one of the first Pashtun leaders to take up arms against ...