In an exclusive interview with TOLOnews, Qayoum Karzai, brother of President Hamid Karzai and current candidate for the spring Presidential elections, emphasized the importance of a continued partnership between Afghanistan and the U.S. on security issues.
Highlighting the continued security challenges facing Afghanistan, and the still developing state of the country's security institutions, Karzai said foreign aid and particularly support from the U.S. was critical and would remain important in the coming years.
As coalition troops begin to withdraw as at an ever increasing rate before the NATO combat mission ends at the end of 2014, the Afghan forces assume evermore responsibility for security operations around the country.
Although the performance Afghan troops during the 2013 fighting season was applauded by Afghan and foreign officials, they did suffer unprecedented casualties that many experts said would be unsustainable in the future.
Calculations about Afghan national security moving into 2014 and beyond have focused in part on the pending Bilateral Security Agreement (BSA) between Kabul and Washington. The pact remains unsigned, though mostly agreed upon, and the fate of it has now been left up to a Loya Jirga convened by President Karzai to deliberate over the issue of whether or not the U.S. will be granted judicial jurisdiction over troops that remain in Afghanistan post-2014.
Although he did not speak specifically about his opinion on the issue of troop jurisdiction, President Karzai's brother emphasized the essential importance of the BSA and urged that the accord be signed soon.
"We cannot combat terrorism without international support, it has deepened its roots in the region and we need U.S. cooperation," he said.
The Presidential hopeful added further that the security pact would lay the way for positive development in both the region's economic and security spheres.
Karzai is one of the ten Presidential candidates who made the Independent Election Commission's (IEC) preliminary list of candidates announced last Tuesday.
TOLOnews will be conducting interviews with each one of the Presidential candidates in the coming weeks.
The full interview with Qayoum Karzai, can be seen here: