KABUL, Nov 26: President Hamid Karzai criticised the US and other foreign countries for creating a ‘parallel government’ in the countryside during a blunt overview of Afghanistan’s problems before a UN Security Council delegation.

Karzai called on Tuesday for the international community to set a timeline to end the war in Afghanistan and asked why – given the number of countries involved and the amount of money spent – the Taliban remain so powerful.

“This war has gone on for seven years, the Afghans don’t understand anymore, how come a little force like the Taliban can continue to exist, can continue to flourish, can continue to launch attacks,” he asked.

With an entire Nato force in Afghanistan and the entire international community behind them, “still we are not able to defeat the Taliban,” Karzai told the gathering at his presidential palace.

Karzai – facing re-election next year and making increasing overtures to conservative Afghan tribes most likely to vote for him – has been criticised for being ineffective and weak, while his government was accused of deep-seated corruption.

International forces have set up a countryside system of joint military and civilian teams whose primary task is not combat but reconstruction and development. But Karzai said the presence of the so-called provincial reconstruction teams, or PRTs, had undermined provincial governments.

“The problem here is, in a diverting play, the presence of the international community has created a parallel government to those such as of the Afghan government that are functioning. The PRTs in certain parts of the country have become a parallel structure to the governor of the province,” he told the UN team.

Karzai did not elaborate on how the reconstruction teams had created parallel governments, but the significant amount of international aid attached to them would wield substantial influence in impoverished regions.

He also complained that private security companies “have become a parallel structure to the security forces of Afghanistan,” employing thousands of Afghans, most with criminal backgrounds, who are “equally as harassing to the Afghan population as Taliban and other terrorist outfits.”

An estimated 40,000 private security guards are employed in Afghanistan, a senior Nato official said on condition of anonymity.

Security has deteriorated in Afghanistan since the presidential elections in 2004, because the international community lost focus and allowed the Taliban to regroup and create sanctuaries in Pakistan, which were not addressed until last year, Karzai said.“Rather than conducting the war against terrorism, and the sanctuaries, we began to conduct this war in the villages of Afghanistan where there were no terrorists,” Karzai said. He said bombings and operations in the villages must stop, a demand he has made repeatedly in the face of civilian deaths from US and Nato bombings.

Despite billions of dollars in aid and major construction finished since a US-led invasion ousted the Taliban in 2001, Karzai said Afghan people had not seen security. He called for more investment to develop and quickly expand the army and police force.

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