Afghanistan’s former president is arguing that Washington helped fuel corruption in his country by spending hundreds of millions of dollars over the past two decades without accountability. In an interview Tuesday with The Associated Press, Hamid Karzai responded to findings from a trove of newly published documents that successive U.S. administrations misled the public about the war in Afghanistan.
Karzai says the documents, obtained by The Washington Post, confirm his long-running complaints about U.S. spending.
The documents also describe Karzai, Afghanistan’s president for 14 years, as having headed a government that “self-organized into a kleptocracy.” Karzai has denied wrong-doing but hasn’t denied involvement of officials in his government in corruption.