Hamid Karzai admits Afghanistan 'security failure'

President Hamid Karzai has said his government and Nato have failed to provide Afghans with security, 10 years after the Taliban were overthrown.


Speaking to the BBC, Mr Karzai also accused Pakistan of supporting the insurgency, saying sanctuaries there still needed to be tackled.

He vowed to step down in 2014 and said he was working on the succession.

His comments come as the ex-commander of coalition forces said Nato allies remain far from reaching their goals.

After a decade of fighting in Afghanistan, retired Army General Stanley McChrystal estimated that the coalition was "a little better than" half way to achieving its military ambitions, adding that the US began the war with a "frighteningly simplistic" view.

'Pakistani support'
In his interview with the BBC, President Karzai also traced some of Afghanistan's current insecurity to military strategy in the early years of the war and the failure to tackle the Taliban sheltering in Pakistan's volatile tribal areas.

"Nato and the US and our neighbours in Pakistan should have concentrated a long time back, in the beginning of 2002-3, on the [Taliban] sanctuaries," he said.