The Takeaway

Airs weekdays at 6AM on AM 820

The Next Five Years With President Karzai

Thursday, November 19, 2009

Hamid Karzai has been sworn in today as the president of Afghanistan for a second five-year term.  After an optimistic first presidential election in 2004, this second election was, in the words of President Obama, "messy." It was fraught with allegations of corruption, and looked like it might require a run-off.  However, today's inauguration officially secures Hamid Karzai as president for the next five years. The inauguration itself is to be held as a private event on the heavily-secured presidential palace grounds. Anand Gopal of the Wall Street Journal, on the ground in Kabul, gives us the scene during the inauguration.

President Karzai still faces great international pressure to address corruption in the government in order to continue receiving support from the United States.  Earlier this week the Afghan government announced plans to create a major anti-corruption unit to investigate senior officials.  This Sunday, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said on ABC's The Week "I have made it clear that we're not going to be providing any civilian aid to Afghanistan unless we have a certification that if it goes into the Afghan government in any form, that we're going to have ministries that we can hold accountable."

We discuss this statement and the possible impact on the future of Afghanistan with Isobel Coleman, Senior Fellow for U.S. Foreign Policy at the Council on Foreign Relations.

  • Guests:
  • Anand Gopal (Christian Science Monitor)
  • Isobel Coleman (Senior Fellow US Foreign Policy at Council of Foreign Relations)

Leave a Comment

Please stay on topic, be civil, and be brief.
Email addresses are never displayed, but they are required to confirm your comments. Names are displayed with all comments. WNYC reserves the right to edit any comments posted on this site. Please read the WNYC.org Comment Guidelines before posting.







URL

If you enter anything in this field your comment will be treated as spam
Location
* Denotes a required field